


Butterfly Effect Elsewhere

by StellarStylus



Series: Rachel-reborn-as-Chloe [2]
Category: Animorphs (TV), Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Atelier #1600, Bad Parent Audrey Bourgeois, Bad Parent Gabriel Agreste, Can't keep a good hero down, Chloé Bourgeois Needs a Hug, Chloé Bourgeois Redemption, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Good Chloé Bourgeois, Good Friend Chloé Bourgeois, Insert, Isekai, MDC - Freeform, Made for this, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug is Called MDC, Miraculous Holder Chloé Bourgeois, No Antibug, No Chat Blanc - Freeform, No Miracle Queen, No Queen Wasp, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Chloé Bourgeois, Queen Bee's identity is a secret, Rachel (Animorphs) Lives, Rachel Lives, Reborn in a new world, Reincarnation AU, SCREW SEASON 3, What Was I Thinking?, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 01:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 39,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21939256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellarStylus/pseuds/StellarStylus
Summary: Chloé Bourgeois was meant to be a queen of mean, but what happens when you take the soul of a good person and put it in the body of what was supposed to be a bad person? What if that good soul belonged to a noble but aggressive hero from a completely different world? How might that change things?...Or, in other words......Rachel the Animorph is reborn in another universe as Chloé Bourgeois, and she remembers everything from her previous life. So far she's done a good job of keeping that secret ever since she got all her memories back a few years ago, but now things have changed with the emergence of a new villain who can control people to do his bidding. If she can't keep the truth about herself a secret forever, then how will this affect her friendships with both Adrien and Marinette? And how will she fare if she's chosen to wield a Miraculous against this new threat?(Insert & Isekai story; based on the plot bunny "Roar Like a Bear, Sting Like a Bee")
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Series: Rachel-reborn-as-Chloe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579762
Comments: 61
Kudos: 99
Collections: Reincarnation and Transmigration, oc self insertSI





	1. Rebirth

**Author's Note:**

> STORY DISCLAIMER: I don't own _Miraculous_ or _Animorphs_ ; the former belongs to Thomas Astruc, ZagToons and Method Animation, while the latter belongs to K.A. Applegate (that being the cooperative pseudonym for Katherine Applegate and her husband Michael Grant) and Scholastic. This story is being written purely for fun, and no profit is being made. Please support the official releases! Furthermore, any flashbacks with text **emboldened like this** is actual dialogue quoted from parts of the _Animorphs_ book series.  
> NOTES: Admittedly, this is a very far-out-there idea, tying together two totally different franchises (one of the best YA sci-fi book series of the 1990s combined with one of the best animated series of the 2010s) in a crazy way, but the idea just wouldn't leave me alone and I've already written so much. I'd say this story is like 90% _Miraculous_ and 10% _Animorphs_ (most of the latter coming in the form of Rachel's flashbacks and memories); no prior knowledge of the _Animorphs_ book series necessary, although fans of that series might find it helpful. All that I ask is that readers give it a chance and be understanding, as this is my first full-length multi-chapter story.
> 
> Oh, and because Rachel deserved a much better fate than what she got.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER DISCLAIMER: Some dialogue quoted from _#54 The Beginning_.  
> 

* * *

**Dialogue from the _Stargate: SG-1_ episode "Ethon" (Season 9, Episode 15):  
** **JARROD KANE: Do you ever give up?  
** **DR. DANIEL JACKSON: Not until I'm dead… and, sometimes, not even then.**

 **_"FLUCTUAT NEC MERGITUR"  
_ ** **—Latin motto of the city of Paris ("Tossed but not sunk")**

 **_"Elle est agitée par les vagues, et ne sombre pas"  
_ ** **—French translation of the same motto ("She is tossed by the waves but does not sink")**

* * *

(In a certain time and place…)

_Rachel fought bravely, and she was certain that she'd helped save the planet and the human race, but she had that unshakeable gut feeling that she wouldn't survive this._

_So she treated herself to one last great battle, one where she went joyously berserk on the enemy ship, ripping out key systems and hopefully delaying its escape from Earth. Maybe, just maybe, someone else could finish the job and prevent it from escaping altogether. The last thing which the galaxy needed was this deadly ship crammed full of vile parasites with stolen alien technology flying around and threatening anybody else._

_And sure enough, it all caught up to her, and her luck finally ran out._

_This war had started with six Animorphs, and now it would end with five._

_Up on the screen, the rest of them had looked away, not wanting to see her die._

_The enemy delivered the killing blow—_

_Time stopped._

_And the godlike being responsible for so much of this_ — _the time-stopping meddler who had been doing this for untold eons, the one who had helped her and her teammates out of the occasional bind but otherwise did nothing for them because he saw them as nothing more than pieces on a game board_ — _was now here at the moment of her death._

_One last witness to her final battle._

_She knew she was already dead, but she wouldn't go to her death without some answers first. She almost didn't expect him to answer her._

_But the Ellimist humored her and finally answered her questions._

_Still, Rachel had one last thing to ask him…_

**_"Answer me this, Ellimist: Did I… did I make a difference? My life, and my… my death… was I worth it? Did my life really matter?"_ **

**_"Yes… You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered."_ **

**_"Yeah. Okay, then. Okay, then."_ **

_She wondered if—_

* * *

(In a completely different time and place…)

"Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Bourgeois, it's a girl!"

"Oh thank God, André, it's finally over," the bedridden woman breathed.

"Look, Audrey, say hello to our little girl…" her husband said, grinning like a loon. He couldn't have been happier. He looked like he had just won every election for the next decade and had his prestigious hotel booked full for the next century.

"André, I'm telling you right now, you'd better not touch me again, or else I'll…" and here she leaned over and muttered something ominous to him which the doctor couldn't hear.

As for André's reaction to her quiet threats, he went wide-eyed and blanched. "Er, alright…" he mumbled.

The squalling little bundle finally calmed down, and the new baby girl was gently passed to Audrey so she could hold her new daughter in her arms.

Audrey took one look at her newborn daughter and frowned.

"You! Doctor! What's wrong with her? I thought babies were supposed to be cute!"

"She was just born, Mrs. Bourgeois," the doctor calmly replied.

"That's not a good enough answer," she snapped. "You're fired."

"You can't fire him, dear, he isn't your assistant," André reminded her.

"Hush, André," Audrey waved him aside as if it were nothing.

The doctor just stood there, taking it all in stride. He didn't look particularly worried about his job security; he knew what he was getting into when he learned that he would be helping André and Audrey Bourgeois deliver their first child.

The doctor took a moment to look around the room, this spacious hospital room all to themselves and packed with more gifts for the baby than actual medical equipment, before he turned his attention back to the proud new parents.

"…Look, Audrey!" André was saying. "She has your face."

"Well, of course she'll be beautiful," Audrey said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Just look who her mother is: Me, of course!"

"I know, dear, I know," André reassured her.

And then Audrey's attention snapped back to the doctor. "You, doctor: Since you're not fired after all, why don't you go find something useful to do?"

"Yes, Mrs. Bourgeois. I'll come right back with the birth certificate to fill out." He was all too happy get any respite from that woman and her attitude.

"…Ugh, the nerve of that man," she spat, as soon as she was certain he was out of earshot. "Ridiculous, utterly ridiculous..."

"Now, Audrey, let him do his job," André tried to placate her.

"He said he was going to get a birth certificate for us to fill out, so I guess we should finally decide on a name already," Audrey groaned.

By this point, their new baby girl had fallen silent and was yawning. They both looked down and thought about it.

"What are we going to name her?" Audrey asked flatly.

"How about Chloé?" André suggested.

"Chloé, hmm?" Audrey hummed with a thoughtful look on her face — a rare event for her. "Chloé… Yes, I like that name a lot."

"So we agree, then? It's settled!" André said delightfully. "Chloé Bourgeois… welcome to our family."

Chloé made cooing sounds, which made André chuckle, and even Audrey looked like she almost smiled.

And so Chloé Bourgeois was welcomed into the world.

But no one knew that, buried deep within her new and developing mind, was the essence of a girl once known in another world as Rachel Berenson.

There would be consequences to follow…

* * *

A scene from the life of Chloé Bourgeois, at age 5:

André Bourgeois loves his daughter Chloé.

The mayor of Paris has several stresses in his life, as both the rich owner of one of the best hotels in the city _and_ his duties to the city, but his sweet five-year-old daughter is always the one true bright spot in his life.

And so Chloé must be getting ready for bed now, and Jean walks out of her room to see André there.

"She's just getting into bed now, sir, she'll probably be asleep within minutes," Jean says with a smile. "She's had quite a day. She really enjoyed art class and came home with many very nice drawings."

"Well, I'm glad to hear she had such a nice day," André said with a smile.

He wanted to spend more time with his daughter, truly he did, but he just had so much work to do…

"Oh, and sir?" the butler adds.

"Yes, Jean?"

"Miss Chloé wants to know when her mother would be back from her latest trip."

"Uh, by the end of the month, I'm sure," André replies, saying the first thing to come to mind, but neither he nor Jean really believe that. Audrey answers only to herself.

As quietly as he can, André slips into his daughter's bedroom and turns on the lamp at her desk. He takes a moment to turn and see Chloé all snuggled up in her bed along with her teddy bear, Mr. Cuddly. With the light from that, he looks around the room for her backpack.

For a moment, his eyes fall on the framed picture on the mantle, showing all three members of the Bourgeois family at the Trocadéro with the Eiffel Tower in the background. Four-year-old Chloé looks happy and excited, showing off a wide smile and totally oblivious to the expressions of her parents behind her; André has a strained "dignified mayor" expression on his face, while Audrey looks like she's sucking on lemons.

André just scoffs at the picture and goes back to looking for his daughter's cute little school backpack. Sure enough, he finds it a moment later, and carefully retrieves the folder of drawings from within it.

Most parents would honestly say this about their five-year-old children and their artistic output, but for a something a five-year-old child drew, these pictures look pretty good.

André looks through her drawings, and he's particularly flattered by the one she drew of his official portrait as mayor of Paris…

 _Pretty good for a five-year-old,_ he keeps thinking to himself.

…but then the last one in particular catches his eye.

It's a picture of what he assumes to be a meadow in a forest, and gathered there are a tiger, a bear, a hawk, a wolf, and a gorilla. They're all gathered around a deer-like creature he can't quite identify — is that supposed to be a centaur, and why is it blue? — and the strange sixth creature is holding what appears to be a blue box in its hands.

André supposes that Chloé went back and smashed a lot of white crayon wax into the blue, because it almost looks like the box is _glowing_.

He stares at the picture, trying to make sense of it. What is he looking at? Some kind of product of his daughter's imagination, no doubt; maybe some kind of fantasy story?

"Daddy?" a small voice whispers.

André looks up to see Chloé looking at him, her bright blue eyes halfway open.

"Hi, Princess," he says, leaning in and kissing her on the forehead. She giggles.

"Daddy," she squeals.

"I just had a long day, but we'll have more time together this weekend, I promise," he tells her. He looks down at her drawing again, holding it up. "What's this, princess?"

Chloé looks at it, and for a split-second there, André thinks he sees a strange look in her eyes. But it's gone just as quickly.

"It's a bunch of animals," she says. "And a visitor is giving them a gift."

"A gift? You mean the glowing blue box?"

"Yeah, it's supposed to help them save the planet," she says with a smile.

_Fantasy story it is, then._

"Where did this come from, Chloé?" he gently asks her. "The idea, I mean."

She looks at him and gives a shrug, despite lying on her side in bed. "I saw it in a dream," she says, eyes wide. She also clutches her teddy bear just a bit tighter.

_She's got quite the imagination, I'll give her that._

Smiling again, he gives her one more kiss on the forehead.

"Sweet dreams, Princess. I love you."

"Good night, Daddy. I love you too."

And with that, she makes herself comfortable again, closing her eyes to get some sleep.

He gently places this particular drawing with the other drawings, shuts off the lights as he leaves the room, and exits as quietly as possible as not to disturb Chloé.

He truly loved his little girl. Who knew what Chloé might be like one day? He was certain that she would be exceptional.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Yes, this is the full story based on my plot bunny "Roar Like a Bear, Sting Like a Bee" — and I'm glad to write it! Please go read it!
> 
> This is my first multi-chapter fan fiction story, and it might be on the crazy side, but it just might be crazy enough to work!
> 
> So yes, I had this crazy idea of Rachel the Animorph being reborn as Chloé Bourgeois and altering events in the world of Miraculous. How will a Good!Chloé change things, especially when she's really someone else who carries with her memories and experience from a previous life?
> 
> Again, my headcanon is that "Berenson" is/was Rachel's last name, because that's her cousin Jake's last name and their fathers were brothers. Let's also assume that the Animorphs' struggle against the Yeerks ran for three years, from 1996 to 1999 or 2000, and Rachel was born around 1984, making her 16 or 17 when she perished at the end.
> 
> Blame this on some "isekai" stories I'd been reading lately.
> 
> NOTE ABOUT THE RATING: It's fine for now, but I might raise it to "T" in the future for violence; I promise it won't be any worse than what you might have read in the original Animorphs books themselves, and even then, there shouldn't be much of that. Most of that stuff would come in the form of "Rachel flashbacks" anyway.
> 
>  **VERY IMPORTANT NOTICE!** I've been getting people asking me about where to find the original Animorphs books to read them; well, it might please you to know that Ms. Applegate herself in the past has low-key approved of finding them online and downloading them for free if you couldn't find in print or afford them. So, I'd be happy to send them to anybody who wants them; just please let me know! For that matter, here's the recommended reading order (it's the original publication order)...  
> #1 through #7, _Megamorphs 1: The Andalite's Gift_ , #8 through #13, _The Andalite Chronicles_ , #14 through #18, _Megamorphs 2: In the Time of the Dinosaurs_ , #19, _The Hork-Bajir Chronicles_ , #20 through #29, _Megamorphs 3: Elfangor's Secret_ , #30 through #34, _Visser_ , #35 through #40, _Megamorphs 4: Back to Before_ , #41 through #47, _The Ellimist Chronicles_ , and #48 through #54.


	2. That Which Came Before, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The night before the first day of school, from Marinette's perspective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT NOTICE: This will be it for a while, because I REALLY need to focus on finding a new job. Not only that, but I want to reread all the Animorphs books. I just had to get this out there, because I like all of you so much and I'm so touched by the feedback this has gotten so far.

Somewhere in Paris was a humble little bakery, run by the married couple Tom Dupain and Sabine Cheng. They lived above the bakery, and on the top floor through a trapdoor was the bedroom of their daughter, Marinette Dupain-Cheng. It was the night before the first day of school, and the teenage girl was currently talking on her computer's video chat with her best friend, Chloé Bourgeois.

On her end, Marinette was already dressed in her pajamas, and her hair which she usually wore in twin pigtails was instead hanging loose.

"All three of us were really working hard this summer, Chloé!" Marinette was telling her friend. "All these people said they heard about us from you and your dad!"

"Oh yeah," Chloé recalled on the other side of the digital screen. The blonde had her bathrobe thrown over whatever pajamas she was wearing. "Your parents did that one catering job for us just after school let out for the summer, and everyone asked who baked all the cookies and cakes, so we just told them."

"I don't think my family ever got that much business in one month before," Marinette told her. "We were afraid we wouldn't be able to keep up!"

Now Chloé looked a little sheepish. "I hope I didn't put too much on your plate… um, no food pun intended. But seriously, if I'd known how busy it was, I would have come over to help out. I've gotten enough baking lessons from your dad to know how to do… well, some of the stuff."

Marinette smiled. Despite being the daughter of the mayor of Paris and the heiress to the Bourgeois family fortune, Chloé defied certain "rich" stereotypes in that she was always willing to lend a helping hand and wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty either.

So Marinette just smiled and waved it aside. "Please, don't worry about it, Chloé," she reassured her friend. "It was nothing we couldn't handle. Besides, it made our summer vacation all the more enjoyable, once all the work was done!"

"And how did that go?" Chloé asked eagerly, hoping for details.

"It was really fun, Chloé! We got to go around Italy, see not only Rome but the quaint little town that Nonna Gina came from too!"

"Awesome!" Chloé exclaimed with a wide smile. "And I don't suppose you got the contact info for any hot Italian dudes along the way?"

"Chloé!" Marinette giggled. "No, I didn't."

"And how did it go with your grandmother?" Chloé then asked. "I remember meeting her that one time. She's, ah, quite a character…"

Marinette chuckled, rolling her eyes. "Well, there was an unpleasant moment when I had to remind my Nonna that I'm not ten years old anymore and would have preferred to do some things more age-appropriate… but once we got past that and the fact that it's okay if I don't like those little candies of hers, everything was smooth sailing from there, so to speak."

"And by 'smooth sailing,' I assume you mean tearing up the highways of Italy on her motorcycle, right?" Chloé asked with a grin.

"Of course!" Marinette exclaimed. "It was so much fun… the wind in your face and blowing through your hair… so awesome!"

"Yeah, I know the feeling," Chloé chuckled. "I had some thrilling fun of my own this past summer… wind-surfing, rock-climbing, zip-lining, even hang-gliding… I would have gone bungee-jumping too, except I didn't want to give Dad a heart attack."

Marinette shook her head. "I know I've said this a lot, but you're such an adrenaline junkie, Chloé."

Chloé smirked a little. "You say that like it's a bad thing," she replied. "But seriously, I'd fly to school every day if I could. Flying is just so awesome."

Marinette rolled her eyes, but still smiled.

But she was about to say something else when she noticed Chloé staring off into space, looking nostalgic as she sung some kind of tune under her breath. It was in English, something about wanting to get away and wanting to fly away…

"Chloé?"

She stopped singing it and noticed Marinette again. "Oh, sorry, just some song I like. I heard it the other day, and now it's in my head. 'Fly Away' by Lenny Kravitz."

"Sounds like an interesting song," Marinette commented.

"Yeah, well, you can thank and blame Nino for that one," Chloé elaborated. "He's on this 90s song binge lately. Just the other day he was going on about this one song I don't think I've heard before… 'It's All in Your Hands' by The Splat, or something like that. It's kinda edgy, not sure yet if I like it or not. I guess it would make for a good work-out song."

"Well, then I guess I'll have to look up that song," Marinette remarked.

"I say go for it. So, what else did you want to chat about?"

"Well… Chloé, do you think we'll be in the same class again this year?"

"I have no idea, Marinette."

Marinette smirked, and Chloé caught it. "What?" the blonde asked, eyebrow raised.

"My mom thinks that you deliberately make it so that we're in the same class every year," Marinette explained.

Chloé just sighed and shook her head, sending her long blonde hair flying either which way. "Marinette, the next time your mom asks if I'm using whatever clout I have as the mayor's daughter to get you in the same class as me, just tell her that's not true. Besides, if I really wanted to use my powers for evil, I could do a lot worse than get my best friend in the same class as me every single year."

Marinette laughed. "Don't worry, Chloé, I know you wouldn't do that," she said. "I know you're not like that, so do Mom and Dad."

Chloé smiled. "Yeah, I know, and your parents are the best. Good to know they still hold me in such high esteem."

"Chloé, why _wouldn't_ they have you over?" Marinette pointed out. "Ever since we became friends, you've been coming over here once a week on average, just to do whatever with me."

"I do some modeling for you and your personal projects, I play _Ultimate Mecha Strike Whatever-Number-It-Is-Now_ with you, we do homework and class projects together… same old things but never getting dull," Chloé grinned.

Marinette was just about make some kind of comment regarding their favorite fighting game (and her own impressive winning streak) when Chloé seemed to remember something else and then jumped in with that.

"By the way, don't tell anyone this, but… I think Adrien might be starting at our school tomorrow."

Marinette's eyebrows threatened to disappear into her hair as she stared at Chloé.

"What!? Really?"

"Just don't tell anyone, alright?"

"O-O-Of course not!" Marinette reassured her. Why was she getting so flustered, and why was her face heating up?

Now Chloé looked a little concerned. "Marinette, are you feeling alright?"

"Yes, Chloé, really fine I'm… I mean… really, I'm fine!" Marinette stammered. _Why am I acting like this?_ she thought to herself.

"You sure about that?"

"Yeah, just a little hot, maybe I just need to open the window, hang on!" And with that, she dashed across the room to open the window… and knocked over a few things along the way.

"Marinette, are you alright!?" Chloé's voice called from her end.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Marinette said with a sigh as she trudged back to her seat. She flung herself into it and spun it around once.

"Oh good, you're still alive," Chloé said cheerfully. "You had me worried there."

"Yeah, uh, I think the air conditioning was on the fritz, so I just wanted to open the window," Marinette explained away with a forced laugh.

Chloé laughed too, before she suddenly yawned. "Alright, then," she declared, "Maybe I should go to bed soon. I wasn't planning on doing some night owl routine before the first day of school."

"Well, then I guess I'll see you tomorrow, Chloé."

"You got that right. Good night, Marinette."

"Good night!"

And with that, the call was dropped, and it was just Marinette by herself in her own private sanctuary.

Marinette smiled. Ever since she and Chloé had first met on that first day at school a few years ago (they were both around eleven years old at the time), they got along rather well. Marinette loved design and wanted to get into the fashion world, and Chloé loved fashion and shopping, so the two got along like a house on fire.

…Well, actually it wasn't the first time they'd actually met, as far as either of them could recall. The actual first time was when they were both around six years old. Marinette's parents had taken her to this park they hadn't been to before or since, and some bullies had given her a hard time, even going so far as to snatch away her new toy yo-yo and throw it up into a tree where it got tangled in the branches. She'd gone home desolate, her parents trying to comfort her over the loss of her toy which she thought she'd never get back.

Imagine her surprise when, on the second day of school and the second day of knowing Chloé from there, Chloé herself had shown up with Marinette's old yo-yo. Apparently, Chloé had managed to get it back, but Marinette was already gone from the park, and so the blonde girl had just hung onto it, where it had been sitting in her closet collecting dust. And that was after she'd been there every day for the next two or three weeks after that, hoping that Marinette would show up again so that Chloé could return the toy. In her own words: "I just felt so bad for that other girl whose yo-yo was taken away from her by those bullies."

Chloé insisted it was no big deal, she was just trying to return a missing toy to its rightful owner, _et cetera_ … but Marinette was so grateful that she'd almost suffocated Chloé to death by hugging her so hard. In her eyes, Chloé was practically a hero.

That first weekend after the first full week of school, Marinette beckoned Chloé over to her home, and what was supposed to be a few hours on a Saturday afternoon instead ended up being _several_ hours as the two girls had lots of fun in Marinette's bedroom, doing everything from chatting about fashion to playing video games together. Chloé had even stayed for supper and got to enjoy Marinette's father's awesome pizza, and when it finally got too late in the evening, the blonde finally went home, walking out with a huge smile on her face from her first playdate with her new friend. She thanked Marinette's parents profusely, and even expressed a little concern about overstaying her welcome, but Marinette's parents had insisted that it was perfectly fine for her first time over and they were glad to see that their daughter had a good new friend.

Chloé would end up being Marinette's best friend.

But as Marinette was reminiscing about how she first became friends with Chloé, it inevitably led to thoughts about a certain uneasy period in their friendship.

A little over a year later after they first met in school and became friends, something happened with Chloé, about a week or so after the blonde's twelfth birthday.

It was just another normal day, another Monday at the start of a school week… until Chloé walked into the classroom, looking restless like she hadn't gotten any sleep whatsoever the previous night. And her clothes, while not obnoxiously expensive, were probably the plainest ones she had in her wardrobe. Even her hair was different; she'd worn it hanging loose instead of tied back in her usual ponytail, and for once she wasn't wearing those sunglasses up on her head.

The way she appeared, the way she acted… it was like she was a totally different person. Practically no one recognized her at first. She was still nice and cordial to everyone, but she looked like she felt out of place. And then there was this wary look in her eyes, with how she acted like she was constantly glancing around for possible threats. But the most striking thing was how her eyes had this intense gaze to them when she got angry.

And then Chloé had been out sick for the rest of the week after that. Apparently she'd come down with some kind of bug, but Marinette wondered what had really happened. She'd never known Chloé to be sick for so long, and she'd never seen Chloé skip school either.

The following Monday, a week after it all started, Chloé walked back into the classroom acting as if everything was normal. Somehow, she'd managed to get all caught up on all her missed homework, and took her seat as if nothing was wrong. But within a few hours, it was clear to everyone else that Chloé was not alright. She was just so… _quiet_. Some other girls were usually the ones in class who somehow managed to fade into the background and be forgotten by everyone else around them, but somehow Chloé outdid any of them in that regard. The blonde was almost completely silent, not speaking unless spoken to or called upon to answer a question in class, and just staring off into space, seeing things which only she could see.

Lots of words were tossed around when people thought Chloé couldn't hear them. _Jumpy. Wary. Nervous. Depressed. Hyper-vigilant._

It was a month or so after that until Chloé began to act somewhat normal again. When asked about it, she would simply insist that she'd had some really bad nightmares, or that she was regretting how spoiled and bratty she'd acted when she was much younger, and either way her most recent argument with her mother Audrey hadn't helped either. That was all she would say on the matter.

Somehow, Marinette didn't completely believe that.

But Marinette had noticed other subtle little changes in Chloé in the few years since then, things which had persisted to this very day. First there was a certain fondness for animals which she didn't have before, especially for bears and elephants and eagles. Then there was this absolute hatred for slugs, and it was so intense that Chloé absolutely refused to have anything to do with them, even eating them as _escargot_. For that matter, she wasn't so fond of polar bears, either. And then there was her newfound obsession with fighting in self-defense, so now she did not only fencing but also something called Krav Maga, because she insisted that the mayor's daughter should know how to defend herself. And then on top of that there was this new look in Chloé's eyes whenever she got angry; it didn't happen often, but when she got _really_ angry, she had this intense glare which scared everyone. But the one thing which really stood out to Marinette was this new catchphrase of hers: _"Let's do it!"_

And yet, Chloé had never stopped being Marinette's friend. In fact, when they had their first real heart-to-heart talk since this little breakdown of hers, about a month after it happened, it ended up with Chloé hugging Marinette so tight that it was the ravenette's turn to be afraid of being crushed or suffocated to death. Chloé had profusely apologized for her "funk" as she called it, and promised to be a better friend.

…Although precisely _what_ set her off, Chloé never said. To this day, she still refused to say. She would talk to Marinette about literally anything but that.

Knowing it wouldn't do any good to keep thinking about it, Marinette pushed those thoughts aside and looked over all her belongings one last time. Then she noticed a half-finished project next to the sewing machine.

It was the night before the first day of school, but surely this one little thing wouldn't take that long… right? Marinette was sure that she would still be able to wake up and get to school on time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Sorry if this comes across as an info dump, I just needed to set the stage. I also decided to chop up this "chapter" into 3 parts so it's not just one big wall of text; Adrien and Chloé up next. NEXT after this is Hawk Moth and Stoneheart!
> 
> Also, I just want to comment on how amazed I am by the feedback with people telling me how they must read Animorphs now or how they need to revisit it. Not to pat myself on the back too much, but seriously, this story is compelling Miraculous fans to check out the other, older series? Interesting. And by that same token, I'm also amused to see some people (hello, SoloMoon) going in the other direction, being much more familiar with Animorphs but now eager to investigate Miraculous.
> 
> For anyone interested, it looks like the whole book series is available now on Kindle (the 54 main titles, the 4 Megamorphs books, and the 4 Chronicles backstory books), but that could cost a lot all at once.
> 
> Personal opinion of mine, but the song "Fly Away" by Lenny Kravitz (which came out around the same time as the original run for Animorphs) would have been (and would still be) a perfect song for Tobias, especially with him as a red-tailed hawk. As for that song by The Splat, well, just look it up to see what TV series it was used for and you'll get the joke…


	3. That Which Came Before, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The night before the first day of school, from Adrien's perspective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much else to say here... other than how much I appreciate everyone reading and reviewing. You're all awesome. :)

Across the city, in a very beautiful manor, a boy of the same age was texting his friend back and forth on his cell phone.

Adrien Agreste, son of the famous fashion mogul Gabriel Agreste, was lying on his bed and furiously texting away on his smartphone. He was supposed to be asleep as per his strict schedule, but he was discreetly texting his best friend before he really did go to bed.

His friend had texted him first: _So, are you looking forward to tomorrow, Adrien?_

He texted back to her: _You bet I am, Chlo-Chlo!_

_Ugh, I thought we were past the childish nicknames, ADRIKINS._

_Sorry, Chloé._ He added a winking emoticon to that little apology.

 _I forgive you._ A bright and cheerful smiley face emoticon accompanied that. And then she added: _As if I couldn't handle a little name-calling._

Not that she could see it, but right now, Adrien was giving a smile which could match that emoticon. In Adrien's mind, Chloé wasn't afraid of anything.

 _Anyway, I assume you've already got a plan?_ She texted him.

 _Of course I do! If the warden won't let me out on parole, then I'll just have to escape._ And then, because he couldn't resist a good old-fashioned movie reference, he added: _Even if I have to do it with my rock hammer which I'll wear down all the way to the nub._

Her reply was instantaneous: _Dork._ And then before he could think of a clever reply to that, she added: _And I suppose you have some place on the coast of Mexico picked out?_

He stifled a laugh. Of course she'd seen that movie too.

Finally, he said: _One step at a time._

She replied: _Sound wisdom._

And then, because he just couldn't help himself, he added: _Besides, if I get shipped off to some place with a name like "Devil's Island" then I can just ask for help from a man with a butterfly tattoo._

Her reply: _Wow, are you determined to quote every jailbreak movie or what?_

Him: _Nah, I think I've hit my quota for the day._

Her: _What a relief._ (This was following by another winking emoticon.)

Feeling some excitement, he then asked her: _Do you think anyone I know will be there?_

Her reply: _Do you mean in our class or in the school in general?_

_Either/or._

_Some of my friends and classmates will be there. Especially Marinette._

_Oh good, I like her._

_Really? You do?_

_Yeah, as a friend._

_OK, if you say so._

Adrien read the words again, feeling like he was missing something but he wasn't sure just what.

It was just as well, because her next message saved him from any further awkwardness.

_It's getting late, but I'll see you tomorrow, Adrien. Get some sleep._

_Good night, Chloé._

And with that, he set the alarm on his smartphone for an earlier-than-usual time to wake up and put it aside on his bedside dresser.

It was good to know that he could still rely on his first and oldest friend, Chloé. Especially lately, he didn't know who else he could rely upon.

In the past several months since his mother's disappearance, his father had only grown more controlling and — dare he say it — paranoid. Adrien didn't know how far his father's power reached, but somehow it wouldn't have surprised him if his father could monitor whatever he was doing on his cell phone. And so he and Chloé had decided to play it safe by speaking in code, in a way.

Adrien was so grateful to Chloé for helping him out; sometimes his childhood friend was also like the loving and caring older sister he'd never had.

Sometimes Adrien felt bad that he couldn't comfort Chloé and look out for her the way she had for him. _Especially_ after "that time" a couple of years ago when she'd woken up one morning and acted so different after that. Now Chloé acted like someone who had a lot more on her mind these days, even if she'd mostly returned to her normal state before that little episode.

His thoughts darkened a little to when his own mother Emilie had disappeared several months ago; Chloé had literally dropped everything to come over to his house and comfort him. She was a real comfort to him… at least until his own father _asked_ (read: _ordered_ ) her to leave the Agreste household less than an hour later.

Adrien still remembered that. The way Chloé had firmly stood her ground at first, looking Gabriel Agreste dead in the eye. First there was that newfound death glare of hers which unnerved not only Adrien's father but also Nathalie as well as the Gorilla. But then after a moment, she finally relented and instead _smirked_ at the adults, as if to say: _I'm not afraid of you, but I'm only acquiescing because you asked me so nicely._

Even after she left, all three adults still looked a little rattled.

Adrien's thoughts darkened a little more at the thought of his father. Adrien knew that his father was upset over the disappearance of his wife and Adrien's mother, and Adrien understood that his father wanted what was best for him… but darn it, would it have killed the great and powerful Gabriel Agreste to actually act like a father to his own son? Especially in a time of crisis like this, when his mother was still missing? Weren't families supposed to band together in situations like this?

What really confounded Adrien was how his father's reaction to this situation had been to keep his son a virtual prisoner in his own home. Adrien knew he wasn't _really_ a prisoner in the literal sense… although the way the sunlight cast shadows from the windowpanes in a shape like prison bars certainly did nothing to dispel _that_ illusion.

Honestly, it was times like this that he actually hated his nice big bedroom. Sure, it had all these cool things, all these cool things and an entire collection of games to go along with his personal library, but what good was it if he couldn't share it with anyone? He couldn't even remember the last time he used the skateboard ramp or the rock-climbing wall. If anything, he was sure that Chloé, ever the daredevil herself, had used those things in her combined visits more than _he_ ever did in his entire life so far.

At least Chloé had been there for them. Even if she couldn't be there for him in person, she was still available for him by telephone and through the Internet. In her own words: "I owe you and your family so much. I especially owe your mother: If it hadn't been for a few people in my life like Aunt Emilie, I'd have still been a spoiled brat and have grown up to be an even worse person."

 _Aunt Emilie_ — Adrien smiled at the thought of Chloé's pet name for his own mom.

Hopefully, they would find Emilie Agreste again, and very soon.

Maybe then, when they were whole as a family again, things could finally go back to normal.

Maybe then, Gabriel Agreste would finally act like a normal father again.

And in the meantime, he had his first day of school tomorrow.

"Can't wait to make some new friends tomorrow," he remarked to himself with a smile.

And with that, he allowed himself to relax and drift off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Up next is Chloé, then the first day back at school...


	4. That Which Came Before, Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The night before the first day of school, from Chloé's perspective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: This is the last of the info-dumps, I PROMISE. Like I said, I just wanted to set the stage. Also, I've tried to keep it vague as not to spoil anyone who hasn't read the Animorphs books. WARNING: Gets a little dark with mentions of all the things Rachel went through.
> 
> But I also want to thank everyone who's read and reviewed so far, for both this story and the plot bunny before it. Between FFN and AO3, and listed in no particular order, I want to thank: Anifan1/Animorphgirl, Gryphinwyrm7, Nomolosk, LotusWolf, SoloMoon, yellow 14, KatoGS123, ThrawnCA, The Keeper of Worlds, flairina, Alyce Reide, rosetrang628, Angelwings2002 and Pesterfield for reviewing! And thanks to everyone else for following, favoriting and leaving kudos!

On the top floor of the prestigious hotel known as Le Grande Paris, Chloé Bourgeois smiled as she exited the chat program and powered down her computer for the night. She had already called Marinette and texted Adrien, and there wasn't much else to do before it was time to get to bed before she got up early the following morning for the first day of school. Her eyes wandered around the room, taking in the various objects from the beautiful calligraphy kit on her desk to the punching bag hanging from the ceiling in one corner of her room, the latter accompanied by a stack of books and DVDs on self-defense. In the past few years since her little "epiphany," she realized that she wanted to make the most out of life and try lots of new things.

Chloé Bourgeois herself was many things. She was the heiress to the Bourgeois family fortune. She was the daughter of the mayor of Paris, Andre Bourgeois. She was also the daughter of the head of _Style Queen_ magazine, Audrey Bourgeois (although the girl secretly wished she didn't have someone like that witch for a mother). She was a strong-spirited teenage girl, one who loved action and excitement, and even practiced fencing and martial arts, because she insisted that the mayor's daughter should know how to defend herself (although it was also really because she was a not-so-secret adrenaline junkie).

But there was another side to her no one ever saw, a side that she could never let anyone else see.

The side of her which was the soul or spirit or whatever-it-was of a fallen hero from another world.

It was only a few years ago when the girl known as Chloé Bourgeois remembered what could only be described as her past life — from what had to be another universe.

Her life as a girl named Rachel Berenson.

Even now, she still remembered that night in another life so vividly. Just another Friday night at the mall in their town in southern California. Rachel had dragged her best friend Cassie into shopping, and on the way out, they'd met up with Rachel's cousin Jake, his best friend Marco, and the relative new kid in town Tobias.

Their decision to take a shortcut home through that abandoned construction site would change everything. None of them could have counted on that alien spaceship landing right in front of them, or the injured and dying alien stumbling out of it right in front of them.

That alien's name was Elfangor, and he identified himself as part of a race known as Andalites… and then he warned them about the Yeerks, who had already begun to invade Earth for the past few years through a stealth invasion. Slowly but surely, the slug-like Yeerks would capture unsuspecting humans and use them as hosts, controlling their bodies from the brain and leaving the hosts as virtual prisoners in their own heads. And because they were so well-hidden, anyone could be a Controller.

The Yeerks had already enslaved various other species, and now they had set their sights on the human race, what with its population back then still approaching the six billion mark.

But before his time was up, Elfangor gave them all the power to _morph_ — the power to transform into any animal they touched.

They ran and hid before any Yeerk attack craft could land, and they stayed long enough to witness Elfangor's gruesome demise at the hands of the Yeerk commander designated Visser Three. They were lucky to escape without being caught.

This group of resistors who were given the power to "morph" into any animal they touched, and thus called themselves Animorphs — a clever portmanteau of "animal morphers."

And not long after that, they found another Andalite, one trapped at the bottom of the ocean following the same disastrous battle in Earth's orbit which Elfangor and the other Andalites lost. His name was Aximili — the Animorphs called him "Ax" for short — and he turned out to be Elfangor's younger brother. It was now six of them against an alien empire.

And they fought for three years. Only towards the end, after so many setbacks and the change in leadership, the Yeerks became desperate enough to dispense with the stealth invasion and opt for open warfare.

And it was Rachel who fell in the final battle. Doing one last mission, something which only she could do. A grim and terrible task on the orders of her cousin Jake.

That was her previous life. And as for _this_ life…

A week or so after her twelfth birthday, Chloé had woken up screaming in the middle of the night, her head filled with images and memories of that war against the Yeerks. It had taken several minutes, but she finally remembered everything. Not only that, but she _felt_ different too, now taking in her surroundings with what felt like different eyes and a different mind behind those eyes. No, now she felt like _Rachel_ again.

This had led to confusion and anger, wondering _what the hell she was doing there_ , before she also remembered her current life. Just to drive that point home, she'd even looked in the mirror and saw a different face staring back at her. She was still a blue-eyed blonde, but even that wasn't really the same anymore. Now she had slightly brighter blonde hair, eyes just a slightly deeper shade of blue, and a rounder face as well as a somewhat different body structure… and now she was in the body of a girl who had just turned twelve years old instead of the body of a girl just shy of seventeen.

And then she realized that she'd had "flashes" of past memories along the way all this time, but she'd simply dismissed them as thoughts or daydreams spawned by an overactive imagination. But now she reckoned that it must have been her old self shining through.

That first day of remembering everything as Rachel the Animorph was rough for her. She was so off her game, and everyone noticed. Oh, she still certainly remembered how to be Chloé, with everything from speaking perfect French to knowing and remembering everyone in her life, but for the first time she felt like Rachel again. But she felt like "Rachel" was buried underneath and "Chloé" was built on top of that.

She was still friends with other kids like Adrien and Marinette, but she still missed her friends and teammates from her other life.

The other five Animorphs… she wondered how they would have made out after winning the war against the Yeerks and surviving. To say nothing of her own family, her mother Naomi and her father Daniel and her two little sisters Jordan and Sara. They would have all been devastated. Rachel just wished she could have said goodbye to all of them, at the very least. Her heart broke at the thought of all of them and what they must have gone through after the war was over.

Speaking of the Yeerk invasion… there was no indication that it had ever happened here.

After discretely doing some online searches from a public computer in a library after school (no way was she leaving such clues to her search history on her own personal computer!), she found no trace of that war or any of the other alien species she'd interacted with. No Andalites, no Yeerks, no Hork-Bajir or Taxxons or Gedds or any of those other alien races… nothing. She'd punched in every species name and individual name she could think of… and got nothing. She'd looked up The Sharing (the Yeerks' sham of a community outreach organization to convince unsuspecting humans to join them) and all the dummy corporations whose names she could still remember… and still got nothing. Aside from what she'd fought and witnessed as an Animorph, it seemed like human history was pretty much identical up to the year 2000.

Unless this was all some kind of elaborate hoax, she could only conclude that she'd somehow ended up in a completely different universe.

She'd even tried morphing again, once she was alone in her bedroom with the doors shut and windows concealed. Of course it didn't work; her powers didn't carry over from that life into this life. This body, the one belonging to the girl known to the world as Chloé Bourgeois, had never come into contact with the Andalite morphing technology and had never acquired the DNA of other living beings. Still, she figured it had been worth a shot…

Later that night, after that first day of wandering around and feeling like a stranger lost in a strange land, she'd wandered out onto her balcony in the middle of a thunderstorm and screamed at the sky. She raged and howled at this bizarre and unexplainable turn of events, demanding that the Ellimist show himself and give some kind of explanation. She'd finally broken down crying, begging any higher power that would listen to her to send her back. With no explanation or intervention forthcoming, she'd trudged back inside, dried herself off, and tried to get some sleep.

She paid the price for her recklessness by getting sick from the rainstorm. She spent the rest of the school week sick in bed, suffering from fevered dreams.

For those first few weeks, she'd had such horrible nightmares, but those few days sick and bedridden were the absolute worst. At first it was just memories from the horrors she'd endured in that past life, but then it mutated into nightmares which somehow combined aspects of both lives. Oh, the nightmares…

She dreamed of the other five Animorphs judging her guilty like grim-faced judges at a tribunal, for crimes ranging from monstrous brutality to simply abandoning them in favor of her friends in this world, and then "punishing" her by stranding her on a remote island like they did to David the traitor.

She dreamed of her cousin Tom, her cousin Jake's older brother and a Controller for almost the entirety of the invasion, coming back to haunt her as a revenant and demanding vengeance for Rachel's role in his fate after they were unable to save him.

She dreamed of Yeerk warships in the skies over Paris, burning entire city blocks while Controllers of various alien species ran wild across the world-famous city. (Sometimes she also dreamed of the Andalites finally arriving at Earth, only to "save" the planet by decimating it so that the Yeerks couldn't get anything out of it.)

She dreamed of the Yeerks attempting another stealth invasion, just like last time; sometimes she dreamed that the Yeerks got to her friends like Adrien and Marinette first and then used them to pursue her, and other times she even dreamed that the Yeerks got to her first and then used her as a puppet to infest or kill them instead…

Marinette and Adrien were two of the sweetest, nicest people she'd ever met — in _either_ life — and the thought of them being subjected to such inhumanity was enough to make her want to weep. She had literally woken up crying when she first dreamed of things like that.

She felt torn between two worlds, even if she was firmly planted in this one with no apparent way of returning to the other one. It hurt beyond words, to know how she was separated from her family, her friends, her teammates and allies… to know that she most likely would never see them again. And all she had were all these memories and experience which didn't seem to do her any good now.

But in time the bad dreams began to fade, and sometimes she even got to dream about the few good times she'd had as an Animorph, like when she went flying with Tobias. For her, it was the occasional light in the darkness.

Rachel often wondered if this was some kind of dream or maybe an elaborate hoax, but as time went on, it was just too real. Neither the Ellimist nor his cosmic rival Crayak had ever turned up, and so life as Chloé simply… continued.

So what was she doing here, in this life and in this universe? Was it some kind of test, or simply an accident? Maybe even some kind of consolation prize from a higher power? She had no idea, so the best she could do was live her life the best she could.

 _What would you do if you were reborn as another person in a completely different universe, one where the things you fought seemingly never existed?_ That was the bizarre and unexpected question which Rachel had yet to find an answer for on her own.

It wasn't easy, but in time, she managed to come to terms with it. After all, she'd (mostly) lived through an alien war by adapting to survive; she would do the same here.

But she also had to hide just who or what she really was. And what with all that anger and rage, that love for action and addiction to violence which she had developed as an Animorph, she needed to find a healthy outlet for it. So she took up fencing like Adrien did, as well as martial arts. She claimed that the mayor's daughter should know how to defend herself (which was true), but honestly, Rachel just felt the need to hit something every so often.

She also tried things which she hadn't tried in her previous life, things ranging from computer programming to playing musical instruments. Even if she didn't succeed at many of these things, it still felt good to try something new which she hadn't done before. If nothing else, it kept her busy and her mind occupied… and kept darker thoughts and bad memories away.

But even though she shoved away her memories as Rachel Berenson deep within the recesses of her mind, she still let some parts of her personality show through. She also still thought of herself as Rachel more than as Chloé. The way she saw it, "Chloé Bourgeois" was just another disguise, albeit one which she could never remove. It was her life now.

And it wasn't a bad life either — far from it. She knew she was incredibly lucky, to be born into a family with so much wealth and prestige, even if it was dysfunctional because of the situation with her mother and her father in this life.

But sometimes, she felt so undeserving of this opulent lifestyle, especially after the things she'd done. After all the people and other sentient beings which she'd killed in her previous life…

She still cringed a little at the thought of her grim final task, wondering if she could ever be forgiven for that if she wasn't already forgiven somehow.

Still, things could have been worse. Much, much worse.

If this truly was a second chance at life, then she was determined not to waste it.

No, she would definitely live to see adulthood this time. She would make sure of it. She might not have lived to see her seventeenth birthday last time, but this time she would reach that milestone and many, many more after that.

Just then she heard a knock at the door, bringing her out of her ruminations. "Does Miss Chloé require anything else tonight?" she heard her butler's voice through the door.

"No, thanks Jean, I'm fine," she hollered back through her bedroom door. "Have a nice night."

"Good night, Miss Chloé."

Even after the past few years, she was still getting used to some things.

After checking her things for the first day of school one last time, Rachel set everything aside, tossed her bathrobe onto the chair at her desk, crawled into bed in her pajamas, shut off the lights and tried to get some sleep.

Her mind wandered back to her conversation with Marinette, and Rachel told her friend about her summer vacation adventures with all the thrilling activities.

Rachel smiled to herself as she remembered the hang-gliding. She couldn't tell Marinette or anyone else about it because of her rule regarding her big secret, but the sensation reminded her of all the times she'd flown in morph as a bird. She had even closed her eyes for a moment while in flight, and she could just imagine herself flying as a bald eagle again, back in another life.

Rachel comforted herself with happy thoughts like those as she finally drifted off to sleep.

Maybe tonight, she would get lucky and dream again of flying…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I hope I've nailed it with the symptoms of PTSD in youths.  
> NEXT is Hawk Moth...
> 
> By the way, I'm trying to make it as an original writer; if anyone wants, I can point them to some original stories I've published here and there across the Net.


	5. Stoneheart, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Origins redux; Stoneheart appears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER DISCLAIMER: A flashback from _#2 The Visitor_.
> 
> NOTES: Originally, I was going to write this entire story in perfect chronological order, with showing childhood for Rachel-as-Chloé, but I'm still trying to figure out how to do that. I'm hoping that we'll see more details in upcoming seasons of _Miraculous_ about certain characters like Adrien and Chloé in their earlier years, as well as other details about their respective families. There must be, especially where Emilie Agreste is concerned. But rest assured, there will soon be more details about Chloé's childhood here, especially after she got her "Rachel memories" back.
> 
> This is where I revisit the 2-part "Origins" episode, which was the Season 1 finale but the first events to happen chronologically, with Ladybug and Cat Noir first appearing. I'm revisiting scenes where things are different because of that; whatever scenes I _don't_ touch upon, assume that things remain virtually unchanged from the actual series, like when Master Fu tests both Marinette and Adrien with his "struggling old man" act.
> 
> Also, BIG shoutout to Cerumoce for making this new illustration of Rachel/Chloé in her outfit for the first day back at school! Please go check out her work on both Instagram and DeviantArt!
> 
>  **VERY IMPORTANT NOTICE!** I've been getting people asking me about where to find the original Animorphs books to read them; well, it might please you to know that Ms. Applegate herself in the past has low-key approved of finding them online and downloading them for free if you couldn't find in print or afford them. So, I'd be happy to send them to anybody who wants them; just please let me know! For that matter, here's the recommended reading order (it's the original publication order)...  
> #1 through #7, _Megamorphs 1: The Andalite's Gift_ , #8 through #13, _The Andalite Chronicles_ , #14 through #18, _Megamorphs 2: In the Time of the Dinosaurs_ , #19, _The Hork-Bajir Chronicles_ , #20 through #29, _Megamorphs 3: Elfangor's Secret_ , #30 through #34, _Visser_ , #35 through #40, _Megamorphs 4: Back to Before_ , #41 through #47, _The Ellimist Chronicles_ , and #48 through #54.

She hadn't planned on waking up so early, but now that she was awake, she saw no point in trying to fall asleep again.

Rachel just lay there for a few more minutes, trying to relax. Her sleep had been blissfully boring, and having no dreams at all was better than having bad dreams.

Finally, she decided that enough was enough, and she hauled herself out of bed to get ready for the day.

Hopping out of bed, she strode over to the windows and threw the curtains aside. It couldn't have been more than an hour after sunrise, and the dawn's light gave the beautiful city of Paris a strangely beautiful glow.

She never got tired of this magnificent view. And no matter what time of day it was, it never failed to amaze her.

Feeling her stomach rumble, Rachel went straight for the room's telephone and called down to the kitchen.

Normally, she ate right as it helped her keep in shape, but she figured that she might as well treat herself to something nice this morning.

"Good morning, Miss Chloé!" the voice on the other end answered. "You're up early."

"Yeah, that I am. Please send breakfast up to my room. Stuffed French toast with whipped cream and warm maple syrup, and a couple of fresh oranges. Oh, and a big cup of coffee."

"Right away, Miss!"

"Thank you!"

It had taken some getting used to, but Rachel was able to become accustomed again to the lifestyle of a rich girl, the life which she'd always known as Chloé. She had also managed to (mostly) overcome her feelings of guilt, that feeling of being undeserving of everything she had in this life because of what she did in her previous life, and even allowed herself to enjoy the perks.

Case in point, the sinfully delicious meal now on its way up to her room for breakfast, complete with the daily dose for her coffee addiction.

She leaned back and closed her eyes, trying to relax…

The knock at the door jolted her out of her thoughts, and she was grateful for the distraction.

"Miss Chloé?" her butler's voice called. "Your breakfast is here."

"Be right there, Jean," she called out, making sure that everything was in order before walking over to the door.

Sure enough, there was Jean, and once the door was open wide enough, he rolled in her breakfast.

"Good morning, Chloé," he announced, "breakfast is served."

"Thanks, Jean, and good morning to you too," she said, approaching him and giving him a small hug.

He returned the gesture, and then he withdrew and pulled something out of his jacket pocket. "I also have this for you."

She accepted it from him, and saw her name _Chloé_ written on the front in her father's handwriting. It even bore a wax seal with the imprint of the coat of arms of Paris. She opened it and saw a cheerful little note, which read: _Have a great first day at school, Princess! Love, Your Father_

She smiled. "Thanks, Jean."

She already knew she wouldn't have been able to see her father this morning, because he had his morning full of back-to-back meetings and she didn't want to be late on the first day of school, but they both agreed to catch up over dinner later that evening.

"Quite a breakfast you've ordered for yourself," Jean commented.

"Eh," Rachel shrugged, "I wanted to treat myself to something nice. You know, one last meal before the execution."

"But it's only the first day of school," Jean stated, raising an eyebrow.

Rachel giggled in spite of herself. "Exactly."

Jean allowed himself to smile. "Very clever, Chloé," he commented. "Well, if there's nothing else, I'll let you be."

"Thanks, Jean. Just in case I don't see you again this morning, have a great day."

He nodded and departed from her room.

Once she was done with breakfast, she moved to get dressed. She had already showered and groomed the night before, and she already had her selection of clothes for the first day of school picked out. It was something nice and stylish, but not so obnoxiously expensive that it practically screamed, _"Look at me, look at me, I'm the richest kid in the room!"_

Within a few minutes, Rachel was dressed and ready to go.

She took a moment to gaze out the window, marveling at the view of Paris. As the old saying went: _"Location, location, location"_ — and there were many worse places she could have ended up. She supposed it was almost fitting that she, a fashionista and shopping addict, should be reborn in what was arguably the fashion capital of the world. Even in her previous life, she'd never been to France before.

(…Well, unless anyone were to count that one time the Animorphs had had to chase the disgraced Visser Four through time and space, after he'd discovered the long-hidden Time Matrix and tried to use it to meddle with human history. The very first stop had been France in 1415, near the Battle of Agincourt, and they'd almost been captured and burned alive as witches and monsters. But Rachel didn't count that, as it wasn't present-day France; it was a mere technicality, as far as she was concerned.)

Indeed, Rachel was incredibly lucky to be reborn in modern Paris as a financially secure young woman. She was grateful to whatever made it this way, assuming that all this wasn't some kind of elaborate prank.

Noticing the time, she got her things together and made her way out the door.

It was just another day in the life of Chloé Bourgeois.

From her room down to the lobby, some of the hotel staff looked up and cheerfully greeted her as they passed. They wished her good morning and good luck at school, and she in turn wished them good morning too as well as a good day.

As Rachel waited in the lobby for a moment, her attention was drawn towards a commotion at the front desk.

A young woman, no, a teenage girl roughly the same age as herself was shouting something angrily in another language at the man behind the front desk, angrily stomping her foot as she laid into the front desk clerk. Rachel couldn't recognize it — it sounded like something Slavic, maybe it was Russian or Polish? — but then a man who had to be that girl's father tried to reassure her, and she quickly calmed down.

For a split second, the other girl made eye contact with her, and then _something_ passed between the two of them.

It was like looking into a distorted mirror. While Rachel (as Chloé) had ocean blue eyes and blonde hair like light gold, this other girl had pale blue eyes like chips of ice and blonde hair so bright it was closer to platinum than gold. Not only that, but this other girl had been rather liberal with make-up like eye shadow and lip gloss and blush.

"And what do _you_ want?" the other girl said rudely, in a heavy Eastern European accent.

"Nothing," Rachel said in a placating way. "Is everything alright?"

But the other girl just shook her head dismissively, as if she was dealing with a mere simpleton. And then, acting as if Rachel wasn't even there, she began barking orders at those near her in her native tongue ( _That's gotta be Russian,_ Rachel thought to herself).

Rachel bristled just a little. This other girl was clearly a spoiled rich brat. Rachel herself knew the type, and not just because she used to be one for a while in this life. Even if she was thankfully set straight early on, thanks to some very patient adults in her life, she still had much exposure to those in inner circles, ranging from other heirs of massive fortunes to the rich guests whom the Bourgeois hotel attracted.

For the most part, Rachel had developed a thick skin as "Chloé Bourgeois," thick enough to rival the pachyderm skin of her old elephant morph. But every so often one or two of these other spoiled brats just really managed to get under her skin…

Finally, the other girl seemingly got what she wanted, and she marched with her head held high over to the elevators, with the bellhops carrying several large pieces of luggage and her presumed father looking rather embarrassed.

It reminded her too much of when she, as Chloé, was a spoiled brat, and her father would do just about anything to placate her.

Deciding not to let it bother her, Rachel pushed it out of her mind and went outside to meet up with her driver.

Rachel met her driver at the fancy four-door sedan which she'd picked for her ride to school. The limousine would have been overkill.

Rachel had considered stopping by Marinette's home first, but it was so early that it just didn't seem right. Besides, knowing Marinette, she was probably still sleeping…

* * *

Marinette Dupain-Cheng woke up to the sound of her mother calling up the stairs to her.

"Marinette, get up, or else you'll be late!"

It wasn't easy, but Marinette managed to drag herself out of bed and make her way downstairs for breakfast. Alright, so maybe it had taken her longer than she'd thought to finish that little project of hers…

"Coming, Mom!"

Still in her sleepwear, Marinette trudged down the stairs to the breakfast table, willing herself to wake up along the way.

"Good morning, dear."

"Good morning, Mom."

"Are you looking forward to the first day of school, dear?" her mother asked her.

"I will be once I completely wake up," Marinette mumbled, trying to coordinate so that her natural clumsiness wouldn't make a mess of her own breakfast.

"So," Sabine continued, more to make conversation, "do you think you'll be in the same class as Chloé this year? That would make it four years in a row."

Marinette laughed. "Wouldn't you believe it, Mom, but we were just discussing this last night, me and her," she chuckled as she reached for her breakfast cereal. "Chloé insists that she had nothing to do with it, and she says that if she truly wanted to use her powers for evil, then she could do a lot worse than get both of us in the same class every year."

Sabine chuckled. "True."

As the laughter subsided, Marinette looked thoughtful. "Sometimes it seems like she really is my good luck charm," she mused aloud.

Sabine smiled. "Perhaps… and while I don't deny that Chloé has had such a positive effect on you, I also believe we create our own luck."

Marinette smiled back at her mother.

The rest of the hour passed in a blur as her father presented her with a box of macarons to share with the class, after he'd praised her for her spiffy new design for their business.

Soon enough, Marinette was dressed and ready to go to school. It was just a brief walk from her home to Collège Françoise Dupont, not even five minutes of travel time by foot. It was supposed to be uneventful.

…Well, aside from seeing that old man nearly get hit by a car while he was trying to cross the street. It was a good thing she'd managed to save his life, even at the cost of half the macarons in the box. But other than that, it was uneventful, really.

* * *

Rachel had been the first one there. It was surprisingly early; she saw few other faculty members and no other students.

She even got to her homeroom before the teacher did. With nothing else to do, she just paced around the front of the room, between the teacher's desk up front and the steps leading upwards to the students' desks, reading articles on her smartphone.

"Chloé Bourgeois?" a teacher's voice asked. Rachel looked up to see that it was Caline Bustier walking through the classroom door, a relatively young woman who was one of the more popular teachers in this school. "What are you doing here so early?"

Rachel just shrugged. "I got up early, didn't feel like going back to bed… so I just came in early."

"Well, I hope you're not expecting extra credit just for being first to arrive," Ms. Bustier remarked, but the small smile on her face told Rachel that it was just a joke.

"No, ma'am," Rachel replied with a small smile of her own.

And sure enough, her classmates began to arrive after her.

_Let's see who's in my class this year…_

So she greeted them as she saw them. She was glad to see them, and they were glad to see her too.

"Hello Sabrina, you're looking well, and I like your new sweater…"

"Why thank you, Chloé! I had a nice summer break, and I hope you did too."

"Hi Nathaniel, nice new sketchbook you've got there…"

"Um, thanks Chloé," he mumbled, smiling a little bashfully in a way which she found rather endearing.

"Hey, Max, you still owe me a rematch for that last video game tournament, and don't try to blame it on the lag…"

"It's good to see you again, Chloé, but for your information, I have a top-of-the-line Internet connection and I myself managed to boost its efficiency by at least sixteen percent…" (She let Max ramble on a bit before he finished that train of thought and moved on to something else.)

"Nice to see you too, Alix, I'm glad to see you got through the whole summer without breaking any bones…"

"Yeah right, Bourgeois!" Alix retorted, but it was all in good humor. "Like _that_ could ever happen! I've got too much riding on this big event coming up for me!"

"I'd say 'break a leg' to wish you good luck, but I'd rather not," Rachel quipped, getting a laugh out of everyone else.

Alix made a face at her, but the tomboy still smiled.

One by one, the rest of them filled in. Rachel was glad to see them all again, but there were two people in particular she really wanted to see again: Her best friends, Adrien and Marinette.

Not that she would choose between the two of them, but she was really concerned about Adrien. She knew about the hoops he was trying to jump through just to go to school and get out of the Agreste mansion…

And sure enough, Marinette eventually arrived. She was wearing her signature look for the first day back at school.

"Chloé!"

"Marinette!"

Both girls smiled as they gave each other _la bise_ and embraced. They would have met up in person sooner, before this first day of school, but there was no real chance of that because Marinette and her parents had come back only a few days ago. The Dupain-Cheng family had to reopen their business and catch up with things, and Marinette had to help them.

"Good to see you again," Rachel said happily as they separated.

"Chloé, we were just chatting online last night," Marinette pointed out.

"Eh, still," Rachel said with a shrug but still smiling. "In person. You know what I mean."

"Hey, Marinette!" Kim spoke up from the rear of the class. He was one of those who had known Marinette the longest out of any of them, and sometimes considered her like a "little sister" of sorts.

"I'm gonna go say hello to everyone else," Marinette said and excused herself.

"Sure thing."

Just then Rachel noticed a familiar brown girl with reddish hair, thick black glasses and a beauty mark above her right eye. This other girl was technically "the new girl" in this class, but Rachel had already met her, since this girl's mother was now the new chef at Le Grand Paris.

"Alya?" she said. "I thought that was you!"

The bespectacled girl turned to see Chloé there, grinning and waving. After recognizing the blonde, Alya Césaire grinned and waved back to her. "Hi there, Chloé! I had no idea you'd be in my class!"

"Well, here I am."

Marinette drifted back over to them, and she saw Chloé talking with a new girl. "Alya, this is my best friend I told you about," the blonde said cheerfully, allowing Marinette to introduce herself.

"Marinette Dupain-Cheng," the ravenette introduced herself.

"Alya Césaire," the redhead replied.

"So how do you and Chloé know each other?" Marinette asked.

"Her father hired my mother as a chef for the hotel," Alya explained. "My family and I are originally from Martinique, and we moved here over the summer."

"And her mother is an awesome cook," Rachel added. "Nothing against her predecessor, but I don't think I've tasted anything better than what Mrs. Césaire makes."

Alya beamed at the praise. "So how do you two know each other?" Alya asked Marinette.

"We met here in school a few years ago," Marinette said cheerfully.

"Yeah, it turns out she's an aspiring fashion designer, and I love fashion, so at first we bonded over that and the rest is history," Rachel added, smiling.

Alya grinned. "I think I'm going to like it here."

But just then, Rachel noticed the patient but expectant look on Ms. Bustier's face, as well as the time on the clock. Class was supposed to start in a few minutes. Now they had to choose seats.

"So, where are we sitting?" Alya asked.

Rachel looked around at the few empty seats remaining. "Is it alright if I sit there?" she asked politely, pointing to one seat in particular. "I kind of want to sit next to Adrien for when he shows up."

"Who's Adrien?" Alya asked, brows furrowed.

Marinette had to hide her smirk.

"Childhood friend, homeschooled for the past few years, could use a familiar face to help him out," Rachel rattled off. "I just want to give him some moral support, that's all."

"Oh come on, Chloé, I'm sure Adrien will be just fine," Marinette told her friend. "He's not that sheltered."

"No, he's not _that_ sheltered," Rachel agreed, "but only because his overprotective father hasn't yet dug a moat around their home to go along with the turrets on the roof. And then I suppose filling said moat with alligators or crocodiles would be the _next_ logical step. You know what they say about a man's home being his castle, but seriously…"

As Marinette chuckled at that mental image of Gabriel Agreste "going medieval" on their own home like that, just to "protect" his own son, Alya looked confused. "Okay, you two, what's the joke here?" the new girl asked.

The blonde and the ravenette just gave each other a sideways glance while Marinette tried to suppress a giggle; Chloé had always had the better poker face between the two of them. "Oh, you'll probably understand when you meet him," the blonde told Alya. "Let's just say his father is a little overprotective."

"Chloé, that's like saying the ocean is a little wet," Marinette remarked.

"Class, please take your seats," Ms. Bustier announced.

Ultimately, Alya ended up sitting behind Nino with Sabrina by her side, while Marinette and Chloé sat on the other side of the aisle in the front row.

"Welcome to the school and to Paris as a whole, Alya!" Sabrina said excitedly.

"Thanks, Sabrina," Alya replied with a smile. "So, what do you like to do?"

"Well, I guess I'm a bit of a bookworm," Sabrina shyly admitted, "I'm just really good at reading and writing and handling big loads of information. I was thinking of maybe becoming a lawyer, something clerical like that. How about you?"

"Well, I like to do blogging and other things like that in my spare time," Alya said with a grin. "I want to be a journalist, so I also do a lot of my own writing."

"Interesting," Sabrina said with a smile.

Alya had a feeling that she would like it here.

Sure enough, class had officially begun. And soon enough, Ms. Bustier began roll call.

And who should the very first name be but—

"Adrien Agreste!"

Whispers broke out among the other students. Most of them had already met Adrien at least once in the past though Chloé, but those few who hadn't, like Alya, gaped with shock. Either way, it was still exciting to think that the young model could be one of their classmates.

Rachel glanced over at Alya and could see the other girl's eyes glittering with awe and delight, and sincerely hoped that the aspiring journalist wouldn't take things too far the first time she met Adrien.

"Maybe he's just running late, Ms. Bustier," Rachel spoke up, trying to defend him. And then, maybe a little too much: "It's not really my place to say, but, well, let's just say that he's had some things going on at home."

Ms. Bustier took a moment to process that, and she finally nodded in acknowledgement. "I see," she said at last. "Well, here's hoping that it gets sorted out and he comes to class soon."

There was a moment of brief but intense muttering among the students in the class before it finally settled down again.

"What did she mean, 'some things going on at home?'" Alya muttered to no one in particular.

"I'll explain later," Sabrina hastily whispered to her, and Alya noticed the urgency in her voice. Even now, the ginger was thinking back to the headlines everyone had seen by now about Emilie Agreste disappearing so suddenly. "Please, just trust me on this."

Alya looked a little disappointed at having information withheld from her, but she grudgingly accepted it.

"Very well, then," Ms. Bustier said, "on with the show."

Even though it was now obvious that she was here, Ms. Bustier called her name anyway.

"Chloé Bourgeois?"

"Present…"

The rest of them answered for roll call. Ivan Bruel. Alya Césaire. Juleka Couffaine. Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Mylène Hapréle. Max Kanté. Alix Kubdel. Nathaniel Kurtzberg. Nino Lahiffe. Rose Lavillant. Kim Lê Chiến. Sabrina Raincomprix.

And once that was done, class commenced.

The minutes ticked by, but still no sign of Adrien.

"Where is he?" Rachel muttered under her breath roughly ten minutes into the lecture. "He should have been here by now…"

* * *

Adrien Agreste was not having a good first day of school.

And that was because he wasn't _allowed_ to actually attend school.

Right now, he was back in the car, with his father's personal assistant Nathalie Sancoeur sitting in the other passenger seat to watch him while his bodyguard "the Gorilla" drove in the front.

"I was really looking forward to it," Adrien muttered. "Chloé would have been there, and all those other kids I've met through her… I could have been in the same class, for all I know…"

Nathalie looked over to him and coolly raised an eyebrow. "Quite eager to see Miss Bourgeois, I see," she commented. "I don't suppose she knew anything about this, did she?"

Adrien kept his face blank. Good thing he'd deleted all those incriminating text messages from last night, he thought. "No," he said. "I just know she goes to this school."

"Did she try to help you get into this school?" Nathalie pressed.

Adrien could tell he was being interrogated. "I wouldn't know if she pulled any strings," he insisted. "Not to my knowledge, no."

Nathalie didn't answer right away, but finally she said, "We'll see about that."

Adrien rolled his eyes, and he didn't care if Nathalie saw him do it.

He closed his eyes, trying to savor every moment before his fancy car returned to the mansion (read: _before this armored transport dropped him back off at his prison_ ). He felt bad that he didn't get to see any of his friends again: Not Chloé, not Marinette…

_Marinette…_

Adrien felt a little funny as he thought about her, but then he tried to suppress those strange feelings about how Marinette made him feel to focus on the matter at hand:

_How to escape from his family's mansion (again)._

Well, at least he'd managed to help that old man. That counted for something, right?

* * *

Even when Adrien didn't arrive, Rachel continued to focus on the class lecture. However, she could tell that she wasn't the only one who'd noticed the absence of another student who was supposed to be there…

At one point during the class lecture, Marinette turned to look at her best friend as if to ask about Adrien. However, the blonde just helplessly shrugged as she looked back at her friend, as if to say, _I have no idea either._

And soon enough, class ended, and the various students went off to their different next classes… but there was still no sign of Adrien.

Did his father find out somehow?

You knew things were messed up when you had to help your childhood friend escape _to_ school to get out of his own house, Rachel thought to herself.

Rachel devoutly hoped that they would find Adrien's mother Emilie, and soon. Hopefully, once she was found and reunited with her family, maybe that could finally get Gabriel Agreste to relax and start acting like a normal human being again.

She tried not to think too much about a certain instance from her previous life where a friend's "missing" or "presumed dead" mother was very much alive, but for really bad reasons…

 _No._ Adrien wasn't Marco, and Emilie wasn't Eva.

It wasn't like _that_ all over again. Rachel was sure of it.

She pushed _that_ unwelcome train of thought aside and put her focus on the present again.

A few minutes before class was supposed to end, Mrs. Bustier suddenly announced, "And I think that's enough for today. We did well today, got done a little sooner than I anticipated."

And with a smile, she added, "I believe that one of us has brought in something special for the class."

That was the cue for a certain daughter of bakers. Marinette smiled and got up to face the rest of the class. "My father baked some macarons just for us," she told the class. "Everyone can take one."

She opened the box… which was half-empty, and a few of the remaining macarons looked a little cracked and broken.

"Whoa, what happened?" Rachel asked.

"Dude, don't tell me you ate some of them yourself on the way to school," Nino said aloud, but everyone could tell he was joking.

Marinette smiled as she looked a little bashful. "Don't worry," she told them as she reached over and opened up her backpack. A moment later, she lifted out an identical special box. When she opened it, she showed that it was full of macarons, and they all looked undamaged.

"My father felt it was a good idea to make a spare box, just in case," Marinette grinned. "And he'll be pleased to know that the special packaging worked."

The rest of the class eagerly but respectfully approached, and Alya found herself one of those first. "Go ahead, try one," Rachel told her.

As Alya took one, Rachel said to Marinette, "Go ahead, give me one of the cracked or broken ones from the original box, they all still taste the same in the end."

Marinette smiled and was just about to reply to that when Alya let out a happy sound. "Omigosh!" she said as she chewed. After swallowing, the new girl gushed, "This is the best macaron I've ever had."

"Come to the dark side, we have macarons," Rachel quipped, lampooning a certain meme from the Internet about cookies. The rest of the class got a laugh out of that.

A minute later, Rachel was just about to strike up a new conversation with Marinette when a disturbance behind them caught everybody's attention.

She turned around to see Ivan, who looked ready to punch Kim in the face.

Ms. Bustier was quick to shut down the argument and head off a possible confrontation, and she sent Ivan to the principal's office. He marched out in a huff, and everyone gave him a wide berth as he passed by them.

* * *

Somewhere else in the city of Paris, the shutters of a circular window opened, and light poured in to illuminate the room's lone occupant: A man dressed in a snazzy purple suit and wearing a silvery cowl on his head with a butterfly etched over the face.

He mused out loud: "Negative emotions. This is perfect. Just what I need. Anger, sadness… Burn a hole into his heart, my horrible akuma."

A pure white butterfly fluttered over to his open palm, and then with his other hand, he infused it with dark energy, making it glow black and purple.

"Fly away, my little akuma, and empower him to make him my Champion!" Hawk Moth declared.

The akuma fluttered out the open window, and away over the Paris skyline to Collège Françoise Dupont…

With that rugged paper still held tight in his hand, Ivan stood outside the headmaster's office, now seething from Mr. Damocles' rebuke as well as Ms. Bustier's initial reprimand for his behavior.

He didn't even notice the strange dark butterfly fluttering over to him, nor was he aware of it infecting that rugged paper.

But Ivan definitely heard the new voice speaking to him: _"Stoneheart, I am Hawk Moth. I give you the power to seek revenge on those who have wronged you."_

His negative emotions intensified and his passions inflamed, Ivan didn't resist. "Okay, Hawk Moth."

And then dark purple smoke spread out from his clenched fist, roiling all over his body…

* * *

Once that little episode between the two boys ended, Rachel sought out Marinette like she'd originally intended.

Marinette exchanged a concerned glance with her. "What do you think happened to Adrien?" she asked, looking a little concerned.

"I don't know, but I'm going to find out," Rachel replied, fishing out her cell phone.

She tried calling him, but no answer. Could he not get to his phone? Could either of Gabriel's lackeys Nathalie Sancoeur or the Gorilla have gotten to it?

Suppressing her frustration, Rachel dropped the call instead of leaving a voicemail. The last thing she wanted to do was leave a message asking why he wasn't at their school, thereby leaving incriminating evidence for Gabriel to find. And of course it would be Gabriel's lackeys doing that, because doing even that was beneath Gabriel himself.

So instead she just put her cell phone away and went with Marinette to the library to get some work done.

"Hey, Chloé," Marinette whispered.

"Yeah?"

"I didn't want to say anything, and I _definitely_ wasn't going to say anything when he showed up, but…" here, she looked around before delivering her question to her friend. "Any news about Adrien's mother?"

Rachel shook her head. "Not since the last time the subject was brought up," she said with a bit of regret. "And believe me, I want Aunt Emilie to come home again soon too."

"Me too," Marinette replied. "I met her that one time, she was a very nice lady. I still can't imagine what Adrien must be going through…"

"Hey, is everything alright?" Alya asked, gravitating closer to them. The new girl must have heard the other two girls discussing something in hushed tones.

"Later," Rachel muttered under her breath, and Marinette gave the slightest of nods. "Yeah, everything's fine, Alya. How are you doing?"

"I'm doing well," Alya said, "but I'm surprised to find out that Mister Model is a no-show."

"Yeah, we were hoping he'd be here too," Rachel lamented. "I tried getting through to him, but maybe he'll show up later. I'm guessing something happened at home."

"That's what everyone keeps saying, but I have no idea what they mean," Alya said.

Rachel exchanged a look with Marinette, and then turned back to Alya, asking her, "What I'm about to tell you is public knowledge, but please don't make a big deal about it when Adrien shows up, okay?"

Alya nodded eagerly, her long hair bouncing. "Yes, I promise!" she reassured the other two girls.

"Good," the blonde said. Then she told Alya, "So you know how Adrien is the son of Gabriel Agreste the fashion designer, right?"

"Yeah, I was just looking that up," Alya admitted, holding up her smartphone to show various magazine covers with Adrien posing on them.

"Well, you see," Rachel explained, "his mother, Emilie… well, she went missing months ago and they still haven't found her. I really hope they find her soon, not just for her sake or for Adrien's sake, but also because his father just hasn't been the same since. I don't think he's even let Adrien out of the house once since she disappeared." And then, after a beat, she then added, "But don't tell Gabriel or anyone else that I said that."

"Don't worry, my lips are sealed," Alya smiled, trying to reassure them.

"Thanks, Alya," Rachel said. Personally, she just hoped that the other girl would keep her word on that; Rachel could just _see_ the eagerness for a scoop in the eyes of the aspiring journalist.

They got to the library to find that a small crowd was waiting outside. Apparently, the library still wasn't ready to open just yet, as they had to fix some things before letting anybody else inside.

Still, it made for a great chance to talk and catch up and get to know each other.

"So, Alya," Rachel said, deciding to strike up a conversation and especially keen to change the subject from Adrien and his family situation, "I heard you like Majestia."

Fortunately, her gambit paid off. "Oh, Majestia is awesome!" Alya enthused. "I especially like this one quote of hers: 'All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing!'"

And then she started rambling about superheroes. Rachel found herself thinking back to all the times she'd had to listen to Jake and Marco debating about superheroes (Jake preferred Batman while Marco preferred Spider-Man).

Actually, there was one other thing about this universe which surprised Rachel. If she was baffled by the seeming dearth of aliens, then she was stunned by the existence of superheroes.

Actual, _bona fide_ superheroes. Just like in the comic books which Jake and Marco had loved so much, except she'd never heard of these heroes back in her previous life. Majestia, Knightowl, Doorman, Sparrow, and so many others…

Superheroes existed in this world, and people accepted them as being totally normal. Not only could they save the world, they could serve in office, too! Even now, the current President of the United States, Camilla Hombee, still donned the suit of her alter ego "Victory" when the situation called for it.

 _I guess being a superhero is a surefire way to get elected into office,_ Rachel had mused.

"Actually, Alya," Rachel told her, "I got to meet President Hombee when she visited France last year. Even got her to take a picture with me. It was awesome."

"Wow, you lucky girl!" Alya gushed.

Rachel was intrigued by Alya's attitude towards superheroes. Truth be told, it reminded her a little bit of herself, back when she was actually Rachel in her previous life. That enthusiasm for heroics combined with that naïveté about just how horrible the burden could be.

A small part of Rachel actually _envied_ Alya for it. Lucky her.

So Rachel let Alya ramble some more about superheroes until they finally reached the library and they toned their voices down.

But that didn't stop them from discussing anything else.

"So, Marinette," Rachel said, "I assume you're already being bombarded with requests for help for costumes for Halloween this year?"

Marinette smiled, shaking her head. "No, not yet."

Alya turned to Marinette with newfound fascination. "Wait… you can design outfits? Like entire outfits?"

"Costumes, clothes, whatever," Marinette replied.

Rachel could have sworn that Alya's eyes were sparkling now. "Maybe… _superhero_ costumes?" Alya asked hopefully.

Marinette chuckled at Alya's expression. "Sure thing! Just tell me what you want, I'll make a list of supplies, and charge you accordingly."

Alya's expression faltered a little. "Oh, right, of course," Alya said. "I don't know how much cash I have…"

Marinette caught Alya's expression and tried to reassure her. "No, no, no!" she rambled. "It's fine, Alya, don't worry! If you can't pay me all at once, you can just pay in installments! Just ask anybody here at school, I do great work and it's worth it!"

Alya brightened up at that and smiled again.

Personally, Rachel was pleased by that.

It had occasionally been a problem in the past, with people trying to take advantage of the aspiring designer. However, Marinette had worked out a system for her friends and classmates: She made the costumes for her friends, and they paid her what they could in installments and in a timely manner without any interest being charged.

The generous side of Marinette which was eager to please others had to be counterbalanced by the more pragmatic side which knew that she needed money to keep her personal business ventures going.

People knew better than to simply expect freebies from Marinette Dupain-Cheng, barring birthday and holiday gifts, as well as macarons for events such as the first day of school. Besides, with all the baked goods from her parents' bakery, no one could complain. It was literally impossible for anyone to complain when they were savoring every bite of those delicious morsels in their mouths.

Rachel had tuned them out for a bit before paying attention to them again…

"…and I really spend a lot of time on the discussion forums for those heroes!" Alya concluded. Apparently, she'd gone back to talking about superheroes, just like that.

"Wow," Rachel commented. "Blogger, journalist, superhero fan… you remind me of that Chloe Sullivan character from _Smallville_. I don't suppose you have a 'Wall of Weird' to go with it?"

Alya snorted and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I've seen that TV series too." Focusing on Rachel again, she said, "Why don't you do it, then? Go dressed up as her for Halloween, I mean. You're already a blonde girl with the same name, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch?"

"Gee, how clever of you," Rachel deadpanned. But both Alya and Marinette could tell that she wasn't really bothered or offended by it.

But deep down, Rachel could find the humor in it and even laugh along at it.

After getting her memories back and getting over her funk, one of the first things Rachel did in this world was go on a personal marathon, watching every episode of _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ from beginning to end. She'd only seen the first few seasons of its original run in her previous life, so now she finally got to see how the series ended. And then there was the matter of all its spin-off material to go through…

And when she'd eventually moved on to other media which hadn't been around yet in her time as Rachel, she gave _Smallville_ a try. The series with its focus on a young Clark Kent before he officially became Superman was rather formulaic but must have been great to run for ten whole seasons. That, and its new twist on having people gain superpowers from Kryptonite exposure and become "meteor freaks" was interesting. And when she reached that episode in its fifth season with the vampire-like meteor freak named "Buffy" (and Rachel's inner _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ fangirl had groaned at that), she couldn't help but think that the blonde actress playing that vampiric character bore an uncanny resemblance to herself, back when she was still actually Rachel.

She must have zoned out again, because she could hear Marinette exclaiming a very familiar name: "…Rachel!"

That snapped her out of it. "Huh!?" _Oh crap, did I give anything away!?_

Both Marinette and Alya were looking at her a little funny. "Chloé," Marinette said a little teasingly, "I was just telling Alya about one of the costumes I did for you about two years ago — remember? Rachel Tyrell?"

Rachel blinked. "Oh, right… _Rachel!_ " (Gods, it felt so weird, saying her own name — _her original name_ — out loud like that.) "The female lead from _Blade Runner_."

The blonde flushed a little in embarrassment as she now recalled _that_ incident. It hadn't been all that long since she got her memories back, and it was the only time when she'd accidentally uttered the name "Rachel" instead of "Chloé" in reference to herself. Luckily, she managed to cover for her mistake, claiming that she'd watched the movie _Blade Runner_ and was intrigued by the character Rachel Tyrell and was quoting dialogue from it.

"Yeah, you did a really good job on that one, Marinette," Rachel added, and Marinette beamed with pride.

"Yeah, and you looked really good in it," Marinette said. But then she grinned and added, "Of course, helping you dye your hair black was another issue entirely."

"Ugh," Rachel groaned, perhaps a bit too dramatically. "Don't remind me."

_That's the last time I ever dye my hair another color if I can help it… oh well, a small price to pay to keep my secret safe, I suppose._

Alya was grinning at the back-and-forth banter. "You really like your blonde hair that much, Chloé?"

"No, my hair is fine the way it is; I just hate dying my hair different colors, _especially_ after that incident," Rachel retorted. "Never again," she declared.

"But you did follow the directions, right?" Marinette smirked.

 _"Never again,"_ Rachel repeated.

Alya smirked. Rachel simply let it slide and let her enjoy the good mood.

It was at that moment that the library finally opened, and the librarian beckoned them in with a hasty apology for not being open sooner.

"So," Marinette said, clapping her hands together as they were all herded inside the library, "not that I haven't enjoyed this conversation, but… shall we get to work? Maybe we should get busy before any of the librarians actually find us chatting away."

"I'm way ahead of you, Marinette," Rachel commented, finding and claiming an unoccupied table for the three of them. Once they were settled in, she fished out her nice mechanical pencil and went straight for her best subjects. She remembered just about all the things she'd learned in her previous life, so while she had a bit of an edge with the so-called "universal languages" of mathematics and science, she had to put that gray matter to use when it came to learning French language and history. (Unsurprisingly, knowledge of subjects like American history and English literature weren't quite as useful in the French educational system as they were in the American one.)

It was times like these when Rachel — _Chloé_ — was actually glad to have something resembling a normal life again.

It hadn't been easy at first, but she'd been able to find meaning and happiness in a life which didn't involve deadly violence or fighting off aliens in an interplanetary war. She had learned to be grateful for the opportunity to be an ordinary teenager, as absurd as this situation was in her eyes.

True, she still had to fight off rare pangs of sadness and regret, to say nothing of the occasional nightmare, but she'd mostly gotten them under control by now.

Let it be little stuff like getting together with friends about trivial things, and not fighting merciless monsters with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

She could almost — _almost_ — forget about being Rachel and instead simply be Chloé.

Maybe that was the idea all along? Was that how things were supposed to be?

For the next several minutes, Rachel blazed her way through her assignments and homework while Marinette and Alya got to know each other a little better, with the other two girls speaking in hushed whispers as not to incur some librarian's wrath.

Yes, things were just fine…

**_BOOM!_ **

And just like that, the illusion of a normal life in an orderly world instantly fell apart on her, once again.

The room shook with the force of a small earthquake. It was enough to send Marinette sprawling to the floor, while Alya almost followed.

"What the heck was that!?" Rachel exclaimed, instantly on her feet and looking around for any possible threats. Before she even knew it, her sense for danger which she'd honed as an Animorph was rushing back to her.

But then she remembered where she was and acted accordingly.

"Marinette, are you alright?" Rachel asked, leaning over to help pick up her friend.

"I'm fine, Chlo- WHOA!" Marinette exclaimed as Rachel hoisted her up with surprising strength. "When did you get so strong!?"

"Sometime after I got my last colored belt," Rachel muttered hurriedly.

And then they all rushed over to the TV monitors, looking at CCTV footage.

Rachel's jaw dropped in shock at what she was seeing.

There was a big rock monster causing trouble right outside the school, roaring someone's name.

She became so focused that she could barely hear anything else in the room, even her friends and classmates next to her.

Marinette was babbling something about the monster having their classmate Ivan's voice, while Alya was going on about supervillains as she checked her phone, but Rachel wasn't paying attention to either of them.

She felt something overcome her… she could feel her heart beating wildly and the world around her falling away as an old memory gripped her, one of her first missions as an Animorph…

 _Rachel was running away as fast as she could as a house cat, with only minutes left to demorph before she went past the two-hour time limit and was permanently trapped in morph… and then she was trapped by a beast that seemed to be made of living rock…_ ‹ ** _You won't get away so easily,_** › _Visser Three said, his thought-speech echoing in her mind… rampaging as this three-legged rock monster which must have been twenty feet tall, he tore out the concrete and threw it everywhere, not even caring if he hit his own troops… Visser Three had her trapped, until an explosion happened and she took the chance to leap to safety… the Visser roared in fury as he realized a parked Bug fighter had exploded, thanks to the runaway earthmover…_ ‹ ** _I'll kill you ALL! FOOLS!_** › _he screamed as he caught up to her with monstrously large strides… she leaped away, taking the chance from this height and being caught in mid-air by Tobias, but even then he could only carry a house cat so far with his hawk body… she was already demorphing as she fell through the air and hit the ground, while Visser Three continued his furious rampage against his own unfortunate troops, tossing some of them like toys and stomping others under his feet…_

And now, watching this new rock-giant go on a rampage, this thing which could pass for the sibling or cousin of Visser Three's "rock monster" morph… it brought back all the memories which Rachel had tried to keep hidden away since she got them back.

But the memory of her old life wasn't the only thing threatening to resurface. No, it was also the call to action — her love for action and her propensity for violence.

The urge to jump back into the fray and fight again was overpowering, calling out to her like the mythical Sirens and their sweet but treacherously deadly songs.

They only thing tempering that was the cold hard truth that she didn't have those powers anymore.

And that made her angry, knowing that she couldn't do anything about it now.

And now her flashbacks gave way to anger… the thought of those stupid alien slugs and their stupid invasion… oh, if only she could have killed them all, that accursed war-mongering Visser and the rest of the Yeerk leadership… _if only she had lived through the end of it_ …

That fog of rage threatened to cloud her mind once again…

Already, she was thinking of all the different ways she could take down this thing as it was attacking everybody…

**_If only she could morph and fight again…_ **

Rachel was jolted out of it by Marinette's voice: "Chloé! Are you listening to me!?"

She snapped out of it and whirled around to face Marinette, who then shrank back at the furious look on her friend's face.

Rachel could _feel_ her own face contorted with fury, and so she forced herself to calm down. "I'm sorry, Marinette," she said, trying to breathe and calm down. "I… I don't know what came over me."

"Chloé, that look on your face…" Marinette trailed off.

Rachel shook her head. "Just… the thought of monsters rampaging around Paris… stomping around, hurting innocent people…"

Marinette grimaced a little. "I know."

And then Marinette flinched as the building shook yet again from the stony monster's rampage.

* * *

Hawk Moth had been watching his first Champion Stoneheart and keeping tabs on him… when he felt something else through the power of his own Miraculous.

"What's this?" he muttered to himself.

Even when he had a Champion active through the powers of the Butterfly Miraculous, he could still feel the negative emotions of anyone and everyone else in the vicinity.

And just now, as Stoneheart was finally making his way away from the school, Hawk Moth felt it, seemingly bursting out of nowhere.

_Burning rage._

It hit him like a blast of heat from a furnace, and if he could have visually seen it, he knew it would have blinded him like a Roman candle.

He took his focus off Stoneheart for a moment, letting his giant champion continue on that rampage, and tried to pinpoint the source of this extremely negative emotion.

Hawk Moth was both intrigued and alarmed by it at the same time. This source of negative emotions would have been so good for his first Champion… but on the other hand, he was simply bowled over by this unrestrained output of anger and hatred. It felt _murderous_.

But not only did it feel murderous, it also lacked any kind of hesitation or regret… as if the person in question had already taken lives in the past and would not hesitate to do so again.

He could sense the fear of everyone else in the area as the rock giant went on its rampage, but why would anyone feel _anger_ at seeing such a display? That was what made it stand out to him. That was what made no sense to him.

"Who could this possibly be?" he wondered aloud. "So much anger, so much hatred! Whoever it is, this person would make a perfect target for my akuma!"

For a moment there, Hawk Moth was tempted to recall the akuma from Stoneheart and have it seek out whoever was feeling that anger and rage, but ultimately decided against it. No, better to simply stay the present course. Besides, he could already feel all that anger subsiding…

"This bears further investigation…" he mused.

Smirking to himself, Hawk Moth filed that idea away for later.

But for now, he compelled Stoneheart to continue on that rampage…

* * *

In another section of the city of Paris, an old man who owned a Chinese massage parlor was calmly sipping his tea, pondering what would happen next.

But this "Mister Chan" was no ordinary man. No, he was Master Wang Fu, now one-hundred-and-eighty-six years old and the last surviving Guardian of the Order whose purpose had been to safeguard the magical items known as the Miraculous.

Master Fu briefly set his cup of tea back down when his chosen companion, Wayzz, came flying into the room with a small _whoosh_ of air.

"Master," the Kwami of Protection said urgently, "you need to see this."

Getting up, Master Wang Fu strode over to the old television set and flicked it on.

He grimaced at the sight of a Champion — no, a _minion_ — in the form of a large rock-like monster rampaging through the city streets.

The Butterfly Brooch was supposed to be used to create heroes in times of trouble, but instead its new bearer — whoever it was — was now using that particular Miraculous to create villains.

Master Fu scowled darkly. The sooner the missing Miraculous was found and retrieved, the better.

"Well," he said at last, "it is a good thing, then, that I managed to hand out the Miraculous of the Ladybug and the Black Cat just in time."

"But do you think your two chosen candidates will be up to the task?" Wayzz inquired, trying to quell his own apprehension.

"We shall see, Wayzz," Master Fu told his floating turtle-like companion, "we shall see…"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTES: Wow, this "Origins" redux has gotten enormous! I'm sorry this took so long to update, except I've had to rewatch both parts "Origins" AND account for the AU differences, as well as look through the _Animorphs_ books for some really good things for flashbacks!
> 
> We've seen in canon how Chloé keeps messing up her butler's name (much like how her own mother Audrey always gets her name wrong), so I've decided to simply call him "Jean" until/unless we ever find out otherwise.
> 
> I just had to squeeze in this joke about Buffy, not just because Rachel was a fan of _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ in the original Animorphs book series, but because the vampiric character jokingly named "Buffy" from the aforementioned _Smallville_ episode "Thirst" (Season 5) was played by actress Brooke Nevin, who also portrayed Rachel in the short-lived _Animorphs_ TV series (a.k.a. "AniTV") before that. IMHO, this connection between _Smallville_ and _Animorphs_ gets even funnier one when considers how actor Shawn Ashmore showed up in _Smallville_ as the "Leech" villain who could steal Clark Kent's powers… and had previously portrayed Jake in AniTV before that. Funny how both AniTV actors later showed up in _Smallville_ as villains who could somehow sap or drain their victims. Oh, and both Mr. Ashmore and Ms. Nevin showed up in the video game _Quantum Break_. **(And that's the last time I bring up AniTV for the foreseeable future, I promise.)**
> 
> So yeah, Hawk Moth can sense Rachel's anger burning like a Roman candle. Want something to be scared about? Two words: RACHEL AKUMATIZED.


	6. Stoneheart, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Origins redux continues; Ladybug and Cat Noir make their debut and confront Stoneheart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER DISCLAIMER: A significant flashback to _#8 The Alien_.
> 
> **IMPORTANT NOTE: So, when I posted the last chapter, I made that little comment in the end notes about "RACHEL AKUMATIZED" and everybody seemed to comment more on that than on the chapter itself. I'm not mad at people; if anything, I blame myself for putting that comment in there. So from now on, I'll keep the notes and comments to a minimum. (And that being said, what did you folks actually think of the previous chapter?)**
> 
> WHEW! This took forever for me to write. MAJOR KUDOS to Khanofallorcs and Nomolosk for helping me with this chapter! They're both on AO3, so go show them some love and gratitude and check out their stuff!

When Marinette would think about it later, all she would remember was a blur. First there was the appearance of Stoneheart, then there was seeing her best friend look so shocked and then so indescribably angry, then there was Chloé's cell phone going off with her father the mayor asking if she was alright and demanding that she come home right away… from there, it was all a blur with the teachers taking a headcount, and then Marinette being allowed to hurry back home.

Both her parents were shocked to find her back so early and then relieved to see that she was alright, both of them hugging her tightly. Once she was back in her bedroom, she turned on her desktop computer and switched to the news.

The images ran by before her: Nadja Chamack reporting as professionally as she could under this duress… Mayor André Bourgeois giving what he hoped was an inspiring speech, complete with the city's Latin motto _"FLUCTUAT NEC MERGITUR"_ prominently displayed on the screen… the damage to Principal Damocles' office left behind by this new villain…

After several minutes, she finally switched it off for a break and groaned out loud, "I hate first days back at school."

Her first day back at school, and not only had a new super-villain appeared, but she didn't even get a chance to see Adrien.

_Adrien!_

Marinette jolted at the thought of him.

Should she try calling him now, just to see what he was doing? Maybe he could finally return some messages now?

But just then, she noticed a small black box on her desk, with a Chinese symbol etched onto the top in red.

"What's _this_ doing here?"

Marinette Dupain-Cheng reached out to open the box… and her life changed forever.

* * *

Meanwhile, in the Agreste Manor, Adrien paced back and forth like a caged tiger.

He'd seen the giant rock monster stomping along his street, right outside the manor's front gates. Not only that, but he'd also seen the footage of his own house from a different angle.

"Probably not the kind of publicity Father would want or like," he muttered, snickering just a little.

What was he supposed to do now? Today was not going as he'd hoped at all.

And then he noticed a small black box on the table in front of his couch, with a Chinese symbol etched onto the top in red.

"What's _this_ doing here?"

Adrien Agreste reached out to open the box… and his life changed forever.

* * *

Rachel immediately went back home, as if that would keep her safe. And while she was en route, she quickly texted everyone in her class, trying to make sure that everyone was safe.

From her balcony, she did her best to follow along and see if she could track the monster. She didn't think she'd be in any more danger inside her bedroom than on her balcony.

She could _see_ dust clouds being kicked up by its rampage… she could _hear_ its roars for its intended target… she could even _feel_ the tremors caused by its rampage.

Worried, Rachel instinctively looked in the direction of Marinette's home; it was right across the river from Notre Dame itself.

But as she looked in that direction, she saw what looked like a skinny figure in red flying through the air, up over the world-famous cathedral.

Rachel did a double-take.

"What the actual hell!?" she blurted out loud.

She didn't even bother taking out her smartphone to try and capture it on video, because she knew that not only was it not powerful enough to clearly see anything that far away, but also because she knew that she wouldn't be able to do it in time.

But she managed to look up just in time to see the figure in red collide with a figure in black, the latter of which was _walking on something between two buildings._

Rachel had seen lots of insane and wild things, but nothing quite like any of this.

_What the hell is going on in this city!?_

She _really_ hated not knowing what was going on and not being able to do anything about it.

For the first time since she got her memories back in this life, she was becoming nervous — even afraid — if only because she couldn't do anything to protect herself or her loved ones. She was no coward.

She just hated being powerless.

So she kept telling herself.

All she could do was keep watching from the balcony, keeping her smartphone in her hand for any updates because she was so hungry for new information…

And then, off in the distance, a tall apartment building shook, before sinking into the ground at an angle.

And then those two figures appeared again, the one in red and the one in black. They were following the trail of destruction!

Did Paris have its own superheroes now?

Not knowing what else to do, Rachel stalked over to her punching bag and began punching away at it. She didn't even bother changing into her workout gear first; she just needed to hit something, and _now_.

And as she hammered away at the punching bag, she pretended that she was punching Visser Three right in his ugly mug…

She kept her big TV set on, with the volume low, just so she could glance at it out the corner of her eye every now and then. It cycled through different scenes, and her father the mayor appeared once or twice, advising that everyone stay indoors and urging calm and patience.

She even saw the Latin motto of the city of Paris in quotation marks as a blurb at one point: _FLUCTUAT NEC MERGITUR_ — "tossed but not sunk."

She did her best to take those words to heart, refusing to sink into despair. Like it or not, she had a role to play as the daughter of the mayor of Paris. If her duties as Chloé Bourgeois weren't enough motivation to stay afloat, then her spirit and drive as Rachel the Animorph wouldn't let her sink either.

Growling in frustration, she quickly changed into some workout clothes and marched back over to the punching bag in a corner of her room to punch it again. At first, she pretended it was Visser Three in his three-legged rock monster morph from her flashback, but then she found herself more and more imagining it as this new rock monster, and she pulled no punches as she pummeled away at it…

Rachel hadn't been paying attention to the time, and so she just kept glancing at the TV screen every so often

But this time, she saw blurbs that the crisis had been dealt with. Apparently, someone had caught amateur footage of these two new heroes fighting the new villain.

Finally tearing herself away from her punching bag, she went over to watch this new footage.

She recognized it as being the Parc de Princes. She heard someone, it must have been the camera's holder, huffing and puffing as she tried to catch footage of the event.

And there was the rock monster again.

Rachel forced herself not to go through that flashback with Visser Three again as she watched this new footage.

 _"KIM!"_ the rock monster bellowed as the other students started fleeing for their lives. _"So, who's the wuss now?"_

Yup, Rachel thought to herself with a sinking feeling, that must have been Ivan.

The rock giant — _Ivan_ — leapt down from the top of the stadium onto the field, and Kim only made it so far before he tripped and fell face-first into the turf.

But just when it looked like Kim was done for, a new figure dropped into view with what looked like a long metal staff.

It looked like a young man wearing a black leather suit, and the pointed ears and long tail-like attachment made Rachel think of a black cat.

His voice was loud enough to carry over to be recorded. _"Hey, it's not very nice to pick on people who are smaller than you."_

 _"I guess you're talking about yourself,"_ the rock monster retorted. _"And the name's Stoneheart! Remember that!"_

The villain and the hero fought each other, and at one point the hero hit Stoneheart with his weapon — which then caused Stoneheart to glow with golden light and then grow in size.

 _"Where are you, partner?"_ the hero called aloud, now sounding more afraid for himself as Stoneheart kept trying to crush him with overhead strikes.

And not long after that, Stoneheart lifted up the soccer goal net closest to him and chucked it at the hero. Not only did it miss its intended target, but it bounced off the ground, and now it looked like it was flying towards whoever was recording this—!

The person recording it must have instantly ducked to the ground, and when the camera angle righted itself, Rachel could see that the net was off to one side — but now the villain had the cat-themed hero in his monstrous grip.

And then Rachel realized that it must have been _Alya_ recording it, because she heard the other girl shout: _"What are you waiting for, super red bug? The world is watching you!"_

And with that, Rachel got a glimpse of a figure in red on the other end of the stadium. Then she realized something, thinking to herself: _Were these the two I saw earlier? Must be!_

The figure in red hesitated for a moment, before finally leaping into battle. She swiftly jumped into the fray and had Stoneheart tied up and tripped over in one fluid move. _"Animal cruelty? How shameful!"_ she remarked aloud.

"Huh, nice move," Rachel commented.

 _"Yes!"_ Alya shouted, and the phone moved awkwardly as she pumped her fist. When her smartphone focused on the action again, it looked like the two heroes were bantering with each other — no, more like _arguing_ with each other.

"Uh, _hello_ , he's walking over to _crush_ you," Rachel remarked aloud, even though they obviously couldn't hear her. "Do something!"

 _"Cataclysm!"_ the superhero suddenly shouted, and some type of sickly black stuff materialized in the palm of his hand.

Surprised, Rachel leaned it to get a better look at what she was seeing on the screen. And then he casually reached over to touch the goalpost…

 _"No, don't do that!"_ the superheroine protested, but it was too late.

And just like that, he was able to make the entire goalpost disintegrate into black ash and dust — just by touching it!

"Well, that looks nifty," she remarked, stunned by what she was seeing. She couldn't help but think of how useful that power would have been, all the times she was an Animorph…

A cartoonish thought popped into her head and she imagined Visser Three disintegrating into ashes and dust with a single touch, and she got a dark chuckle out of that notion. _If only it could have been that easy,_ she thought to herself.

 _"Cool, it's just you and me now!"_ the superhero remarked as he ran at the supervillain. _"Time to rumble, soon-to-be rubble!"_

 _"Cat Noir! Wait!"_ the superheroine shouted after him.

"No, you idiot, don't just rush off like that!" Rachel shouted.

The black-clad superhero — Cat Noir — leapt at Stoneheart, making contact with his large rocky foot…

Rachel watched with baited breath.

…and nothing happened.

Rachel was just as confused as he apparently was. Were his powers only a one-shot deal?

Superhero and supervillain just stared at each other for a moment before the former hit and threw the latter all the way back to where the other hero was standing. Rachel winced at that.

These heroes had never been seen before, they didn't seem to know the ins and outs of their powers… this had to be their first time doing it.

Rachel thought back to when she and the others first became the Animorphs. They didn't know what they were doing back then, either, yet at least they had still survived to fight another day, learning from every fight. Rachel couldn't help it; she clenched her fists and hoped with all her might that these new heroes would do the same here and now.

"Come on," she muttered at the screen, "take him down already…"

Alya must have been straining to catch as much audio as she could, and Rachel also struggled to hear what the superheroine was saying to the superhero, but she could barely make out a word of it.

"…Wait, did she say 'kwami?'" Rachel asked herself out loud. "What's that?" But back to the recorded footage…

And then the ladybug-themed heroine tried something, throwing up her yo-yo as she shouted: _"LUCKY CHARM!"_

In a flash of red and pink light, something fell into the superheroine's hands.

_A ladybug-patterned wetsuit?_

Rachel almost prat-fell over. What kinds of powers were these?

"Who comes up with these things!?" she shouted aloud.

It was back to the two superheroes talking as they tried to figure out what to do…

And then Rachel watched in disbelief as the superheroine put whatever her crazy plan was into motion…

 _"This girl's crazy…!"_ the cat-boy shouted as he sailed through the air and directly into Stoneheart's grip. And then when the superheroine joined him, Rachel was at a loss for words, wondering what the ladybug-girl was thinking.

"What on earth are you doing!?" Rachel shouted at the screen.

 _"And now… Alya, the tap!"_ she shouted.

The camera moved all jerky again as Alya rushed over to somewhere, and now Rachel could see the superheroine's plan…

Sure enough, all the water from the hose into the wetsuit forced open Stoneheart's grip. But then Rachel noticed a small darkened object falling into the ground, barely getting a good look at it before the superheroine broke it.

But then Rachel stared at what she saw next: A dark butterfly fluttering out of the object and flying away.

 _A stupid little bug did that?_ she thought to herself.

Rachel felt an awful sensation wash over her. For some reason, it reminded her too much of—

Shaking her head in frustration, she forced her attention back to the video recording.

The rock monster disappeared with roiling dark smoke, and lying there on the ground was Ivan Bruel. He looked around all dazed and confused, and while Ladybug was rushing up to him to see if he was alright, the camera was shaking as Alya herself ran up to them as well.

Alya was gushing. _"Uncanny, amazing, spectacular! Are you gonna be protecting Paris from now on? How did you get your powers? Did you get bitten by a radioactive ladybug? Oh, I've got a ton of questions to ask you, miss, uh…"_

(Rachel actually laughed out loud at the "radioactive ladybug" bit. Somebody had clearly been indulging in too much superhero stuff…)

 _"Uh… Ladybug,"_ the superheroine said at last, showing some more confidence. _"Call me Ladybug."_

And with that, Ladybug swung out of the stadium.

 _"Ladybug… super awesome!"_ Alya commented as Ladybug went out of sight.

And with that last frame, the broadcast switched back to Nadja Chamack in the news room.

 _"So thanks to this amateur footage, the Parisians now know the identities of their heroes!"_ Ms. Chamack was saying.

Rachel felt herself relax a little. She let the TV continue playing in the background as she went back to her punching bag and resumed working out.

It was a good thing that Paris had a couple of new heroes, she thought. Good thing that they'd managed to turn Ivan back to normal, after they'd done something about that stupid butterfly, and —

Wait.

Rachel paused in mid-punch as she realized something.

Didn't Ladybug simply let that stupid thing fly away?

Now she began to feel very uneasy, something settling in the pit of her stomach.

Feeling the anxiety overtake her, Rachel growled and stepped out onto the balcony. Maybe some fresh air would do her some good. Her gaze slid over to the Eiffel Tower…

And then she saw it.

An entire _horde_ of those dark insects, swarming in all directions and spreading out over the city.

"Oh crap," she muttered.

Her instincts kicking in, Rachel dashed back inside and sealed the doors shut. Not taking any chances, she grabbed some sheets and linens from the closet and stuffed them against the bottom of the doors, just in case these things could get in that way.

And then her attention was drawn back to the still-active TV. Rachel barely paid attention to what Nadja Chamack was saying as she saw for herself what was happening. Random people all over the city were being turned into more of these rock monsters, simply because these dark butterflies touched them.

_Evil little bugs turning people into monsters and minions…_

_Now_ Rachel knew why she got such a bad feeling about these dark butterflies.

They reminded her too much of the Yeerks. In fact, for all she knew, these butterflies could have been worse than those alien slugs.

Rachel felt her anger and fear overcome her. Once again, she felt trapped. Here she was, hiding in her own home, while these things ran amok.

And now she was well and truly afraid, because she had no special powers to help her.

If there was anything which Rachel feared more than death itself, it was enslavement or entrapment.

Sitting hunched on her bed with her legs drawn up to her chest, Rachel continued watching the news report, eager for any new information. When it looked like no one else would be transformed into one of those rock monsters, she allowed herself to relax a hair — but no more than that.

Looking at her smartphone, she could see that it was blowing up with messages from her friends and classmates. Eager for any kind of distraction, Rachel responded to them, but it quickly became routine. Yes, she had seen Alya's amateur footage. Yes, she was fine now. No, she didn't know what was going on either. _No_ , she was not privy to any kind of top-secret information as the mayor's daughter, so don't bother asking her.

But then Rachel quickly noticed something else: Nothing from Marinette. So she tried calling her best friend.

"C'mon, Marinette, pick up…" she muttered.

Marinette picked up just before her own cell phone could go straight to voicemail.

"Chloé?" Marinette's voice sounded defeated.

"Marinette, are you alright?"

"Yeah, I guess so…" she continued, still sounding rather lifeless.

"What's wrong?"

"Oh, you know… what's going on," Marinette said with a bleak chuckle which carried no humor. And then, before Rachel could say anything else, Marinette let out a huge sad sigh.

"So… those heroes, huh?" Rachel said, trying to find something to talk about. "I think they gave it their best shot, but come on, they were clearly new at all this! They didn't act like a real team, and it's like they didn't even know how their own powers worked! And what about that girl, this Ladybug, just letting the stupid butterfly get away?"

Rachel regretted it just a bit, as soon as those words escaped her mouth into the phone. She couldn't help it; maybe she felt the need to rant a little. This reminded her too much of her first days as an Animorph, and not in a good way; it wasn't right that somehow _children_ with superpowers had to go save the day and protect everyone when the adults couldn't.

And if this situation was anything like that one, then Rachel honestly felt bad for these new young heroes.

…And then she noticed that Marinette hadn't responded to her.

There was complete silence, and for another moment, Rachel wondered if Marinette had hung up on her or if the call had been dropped.

"Marinette, are you still there?" Rachel asked.

"…That's a little harsh, don't you think?" Marinette spoke up at last. "What you said about those two heroes, I mean."

Rachel paused as she checked herself. _Darn it, I overdid it there,_ she thought to herself. Of course, she knew from personal experience all about being a hero in battle, about being a teenager thrust into war with special powers and the cost of the experience… and, of course, she couldn't tell anybody about it.

"And how would you know about superhero stuff, anyway?" Marinette pressed, as if she had read Rachel's mind. "Who are you to judge them?"

 _Whoa… defensive, much?_ Rachel thought to herself. Scrambling for an answer, she said, "Remember earlier today we were talking about superheroes? I said I got to meet Victory that one time? Well, I also got to meet her fellow heroes on another occasion, and at one point they started swapping stories. They all told me about their first missions and all the things that went wrong. The point was that everybody makes mistakes the first time, even superheroes."

No answer right away, but Marinette seemed to accept it — or at least Rachel hoped that Marinette did.

"Look, I wasn't trying to bash these new heroes," Rachel continued, looking for something to say. "I'm sure that… what were their names? Ladybug and Cat Noir? Yeah, I'm sure they'll figure it out. Everyone makes mistakes the first time they do something."

 _Or at least I hope they fix this,_ Rachel privately thought to herself.

Marinette just grumbled something incomprehensible over the phone.

"Are you okay?" Rachel asked gently.

"No."

"Marinette…"

"For crying out loud, Chloé, just stop!" Marinette yelled, taking Rachel by surprise. "You don't tell me everything, so why should I tell you!?"

Rachel was stunned. She couldn't recall the last time she'd ever seen or heard Marinette act like this. True, Marinette had grown more of a spine over the years since Rachel had befriended her.

"I really don't get what's wrong with you, Chloé!" Marinette continued on her tirade. "Honestly, you're really starting to scare me! And what was with that look you were giving when you saw the supervillain on the screen? You looked like you wanted to kill someone!"

Rachel winced when she thought back to that.

 _Sorry, Marinette, I was just dealing with some flashbacks from my previous life,_ she was tempted to say. Yeah, no.

"I… I don't know," Rachel said awkwardly, trying to give some kind of answer. "I don't know what came over me."

"Yeah, and that's the thing, no one knows what's bothering you, and it makes people crazy!" Marinette continued to rant. "Look, Chloé: I get the fact you have some issues like your family situation and all this other stuff when you were a little kid. But then when you get angry like that, it's like you're a different person, and you set everybody else on edge!"

"Marinette, I'm sorry I got angry…" Rachel began to say.

"No, it's not just that!" Marinette protested, cutting her off. "I know you're hiding something else from me. I tell you everything, but ever since _that time_ , you haven't been the same and you're hiding something big from me. I feel like it all just goes one way, where I tell you everything and you don't really tell me anything important."

Rachel's breath caught in her throat, and all of a sudden she felt like she couldn't breathe. Why did this kind of conversation sound so familiar…?

For some reason, she was thinking of an Animorph meeting back in Cassie's barn when Marinette's voice brought her back to the present.

"Am I really that bad of a friend, Chloé?" Marinette continued on her tirade, sounding more and more upset. "Is there some reason you can't tell me whatever it is?"

 _Because it would scare the living daylights out of you and traumatize you for life._ "I'm sorry, Marinette… it's just too painful and embarrassing to talk about." It wasn't a total lie.

"Even for me, your best friend?" Marinette pressed. "Even the one who you've called the closest thing you have to a sister? After all the times you've come over to my home and been with my family, and after all the times you've turned to my own parents for support and advice?"

Marinette's words stabbed at Rachel's conscience. She recalled how, in that year between her first befriending Marinette at school and getting her old memories back, how she'd slowly but eventually opened up to Marinette's parents about some of the things which happened in the Bourgeois household. In time Rachel came to trust them like she did with Adrien's mother Emilie. She'd even gone so far as to accidentally call Marinette's parents "Uncle Tom" and "Aunt Sabine" one time, but they were so touched by the gesture that they were fine with it.

Rachel tried to keep calm, but her patience was slipping. It took all of her willpower to stay calm and not fire off some stupid retort she would regret later.

And as a familiar memory from her old life threatened to rise to the surface, she tried so hard not to think about it…

"Are you trying to guilt-trip me, Marinette?" she asked in an even tone. Not threatening, but not upset either; simply neutral and trying to be diplomatic.

"What!? No!" Marinette protested, sounding outraged. "Your whole 'secret thing' is really grating, that's all I'm saying! It could wear anyone down after a while!"

"I never demanded you divulge your deepest, darkest secrets," Rachel said calmly, trying to stay diplomatic. "Everyone has that one deep, dark secret that they can't share with anyone else. Whatever yours is — and I know you have one, if only because everybody does — you could never tell me what it is, and I'd be fine with that."

"You _really_ want to know what's bothering me, Chloé?" Marinette huffed. "Well, now I've got problems happening on my end too! And since you don't feel like sharing, then I guess I won't either!"

And then she hung up.

Rachel didn't even try calling her back. It would probably just go straight to voicemail, assuming Marinette hadn't already blocked her as a caller. Wasn't modern technology so much fun?

Instead, Rachel just stared at the phone in her hand, trying to process what had just happened.

* * *

On her end, Marinette numbly let go over her cell phone as she realized what she'd just done, letting it drop to the carpet on the floor. Why the in the world had she done that? Chloé hadn't done anything wrong, not really.

Marinette was already very distraught. It was her very first day as a superhero, and she'd blown it.

For crying out loud, Marinette had even argued with Tikki when the kwami had first manifested, saying that she wasn't the best girl for the job. She'd even suggested that Tikki should try Chloé instead, or maybe even Alya because that girl loved superheroes so much. But Tikki was adamant about Marinette being the one to wield the Ladybug Miraculous, and so the girl felt like she had no choice but to go with it.

 _Stupid clumsy Marinette,_ she mentally berated herself, _you couldn't even catch one stupid little butterfly. And now you've blown off your best friend who didn't even do anything wrong._

No, Marinette could see where she'd gone wrong: It was getting all defensive at Chloé's words, the blonde's criticisms of Paris' two new heroes. But of course Chloé couldn't have known that Marinette was actually Ladybug… right?

Chloé had never hurt Marinette, at least not intentionally. Alright, to be fair, she'd still been a little rough around the edges when they first met, but Chloé was already trying to shed her haughty old persona.

And since then, Chloé had gone out of her way to be Marinette's best friend, becoming the closest thing which Marinette had to a sister.

The more that Marinette thought about it, she couldn't remember Chloé ever doing anything _bad_ or _wrong_ or _horrible_ to her.

Even now, in her own bedroom, Marinette was reminded of her best friend. If it wasn't the pictures on the headboard, then it was the other gifts and articles of clothing scattered around the room.

And sure enough, Marinette's eyes landed on a pair of folders on her desk: One labelled **ATELIER #1600** , and the other labeled **MDC**.

For the past few years, Marinette had secretly moonlighted as the mysterious designer with the brand name "Atelier #1600" and was hoping to save "MDC" for when she was done with school and officially entered the fashion industry. It had all started with some off-the-cuff remark from Chloé when the blonde had noted that Marinette's initials coincidentally doubled as Roman numerals and added up to one thousand and six hundred in numerical value. But both of them liked it so much that Marinette simply ran with it, with Chloé's permission and encouragement.

Even now, Marinette could recall the last time she'd had Chloé over to her place. It was a month or so ago, the last time they'd gotten together before Marinette and her parents had traveled to Italy for their summer vacation. And both of them were joking and laughing about it, toasting to the success of the future fashion icon MDC with glasses of bubbly fruit juice as playful imitations of sparkling wine…

Marinette buried her face in her hands, disgusted with herself. What had she been thinking, lashing out at Chloé like that? Chloé couldn't have known what Marinette was really thinking, or what she'd done earlier that day.

On a whim and just for grins, she grabbed her cell phone and tried to call Adrien's cell phone. No response, straight to voicemail.

 _His father still probably has his phone confiscated,_ she thought. It would have been nice to see him or at least hear his voice just once today, but it looked like that wasn't going to happen.

Marinette briefly thought back to Cat Noir for some reason. After she'd literally crashed into him the first time they met, she thought there was a flicker of recognition between them, but put those thoughts aside as Stoneheart continued on his rampage across Paris. _Sorry, kitty, but you're not the guy I'm looking for,_ she thought. No offense to Cat Noir, but she was more eager to see a certain other green-eyed blond boy.

She could feel herself sliding back into that old mindset, back when she was bullied all the time and had no real friends. Even now, she was trying to avoid spiraling, as she so often did when her mind got carried away with all her fears…

As Marinette looked up again and aimlessly wandered around her room, her gaze fell upon the vanity again, where Tikki's earrings were nestled in their box again…

Trying to hold back a sob, Marinette fell to her knees and held onto the vanity for support as she began to weep…

* * *

Rachel sat on the edge of her bed stunned. And then, unbidden, other memories came back to her.

She remembered how, as an Animorph, she'd had to lie, especially to her own family, about how she was trying to fight back against an alien menace. Because telling the truth would have been foolish and suicidal.

She might not have had to worry about another alien invasion this time around, but definitely didn't want to get thrown in the looney bin, either.

And as she thought about it, now she remembered why this conversation with Marinette had made her so uncomfortable: Because she had been through something like this before. Except _this_ time, she was the one keeping secrets and being called out on that.

Now she remembered that one instance…

It was relatively early on in their time as Animorphs, a few months after it all started for them. They had just rescued Ax from the submerged Dome on the bottom of the ocean, and Ax was being less than forthcoming about certain things. Despite the efforts of Rachel and the others to keep him happy and make him feel welcome, Ax was still holding out on them. He was doing _something_ behind their backs.

Rachel remembered that confrontation at Cassie's family's barn, when Ax showed up (in human morph) at their unofficial headquarters…

 **_"See, it's like this, Ax,"_ ** _Marco said suddenly. "_ **_We're tired of you giving us a runaround. Tobias shows up and he's dragging around some bloody shirt. I ask him what it is, and he won't tell me. Why won't Tobias tell me? Simple. He must have promised someone he wouldn't. And who would that someone be?"_ **

_Ax didn't see a point in denying it._ **_"I made Tobias a promise. Puh-romise. It is my fault."_ **

**_"So now you're not just keeping secrets from us, you're getting us to keep secrets from ourselves!"_ ** _Rachel yelled._ **_"You need to get something straight, Ax. We're not your little action figures here. We're not toy soldiers. This is our planet. And this is our fight. You don't control us, just because you're some_ mighty _Andalite."_**

 **_"I am not trying to control anyone,"_ ** _Ax said._

 **_"Yeah, right!"_ ** _she snapped._ **_"The information all goes one way. We tell you everything, you tell us squat. Oh, you sound like you're being straight sometimes, but you never tell us anything useful."_ **

**_"You said you knew the Yeerks would probably destroy any Controller that went bad on them,"_ ** _Marco pressed._ **_"How did you know that? Has all this happened before, on some other planet?"_ **

_She took over._ **_"We show you our world. We take you in. You see our families, you read our books, you even go to our school. And then you keep secrets from us."_ **

_Ax looked like he felt battered by their words…_

The conversation went downhill from there, but it all came to one point: guilt and shame. For whatever reason, Ax wouldn't divulge his knowledge to them out of a sense of guilt and shame.

Even now, Rachel could hear the very same accusatory words she'd thrown at Ax back then:

**_"So not only are you keeping secrets from us, you're getting us to keep secrets from ourselves!"_ **

It was only after Ax had left for a while and the Animorphs had gotten into yet another confrontation with Visser Three, did Ax finally come back and explain everything to them.It was the shocking revelation that the Yeerks had only become such a galaxy-wide threat because a well intentioned but foolish Andalite named Seerow had given them the power to leave their own home world, thus leading to the current struggle against the Yeerk Empire and its goal of enslaving every potential species it could find.The Andalites’ reluctance to share anything else with other species, even in the fight against the Yeerks, was born out of the fear that they would be repeating history and creating new threats to let loose on the galaxy.

Rachel's own words to Ax back then now echoed in her mind. Now she couldn't help but wonder, was this how Ax felt back then? Maybe wanting to share what he knew but feeling as though he couldn't do that?

Rachel and the others had certainly felt bad for the one true Andalite marooned on Earth and they couldn't imagine how he must have felt… but now, she was starting to have a very good idea. And at least Ax would have gotten to go back home eventually, once his people arrived and the war against the Yeerks was officially over.

She sent a silent apology to her alien teammate, wherever he was. For that matter, she sent a silent message to all of the other Animorphs, wherever they were in relation to her.

After taking a moment to collect herself, Rachel turned back to the punching bag and continued to pummel away at it once again.

"It's not the same thing," she growled under her breath. "Apples and oranges… not the same thing…"

But even as she hit the punching bag, her own words from her previous life continued to echo in her mind…

**_"So now you're not just keeping secrets from us, you're getting us to keep secrets from ourselves!"_ **

"It's a completely different situation…" she muttered.

**_"The information all goes one way. We tell you everything, you tell us squat. Oh, you sound like you're being straight sometimes, but you never tell us anything useful."_ **

"It's not the same thing at all…" she growled.

**_"…We take you in. You see our families… And then you keep secrets from us."_ **

"NO, IT'S NOT!" she roared, slamming her fist into the punching bag with all her strength.

She distinctly heard a creaking sound, and then the bolts keeping the punching bag suspended from the ceiling broke. The bag dangled ominously for a moment, and then finally fell to the floor due to insufficient support with a loud THUD.

And just then a lot of dust fell from above and floated down onto her, and she instinctively covered her mouth and her face so she wouldn't breathe in any of it.

"Oh, great," she spat sarcastically. "Just great!"

As she shook her head and sent the dust flying every which way out of her long blonde hair, she heard someone rushing in the hallway outside.

"Chloé, are you alright!?" Jean called from outside. "Some people nearby heard something!"

"Hang on, Jean," she coughed out as she got up and walked across the room to the door. Jean stood there, looking concerned.

"What happened?"

"I think I have a screw loose," she said nonchalantly, jerking her thumb over her shoulder to point at the mess in her room.

"Oh my," Jean commented, eyes widening just a little.

"Yeah, we need to get that fixed."

"I'll get somebody on that right away," Jean began to say, but Rachel quickly stopped him.

"Actually, can it wait until I go to school tomorrow? Somebody could fix it while I'm out for the day."

Jean could see her reasoning, and so he went with it. "If that will be all, Chloé?"

"Yeah, Jean. Sorry, I just… I think I just need to be alone right now."

"Very well."

And just like that, Rachel was alone again, without either of her best friends.

She didn't want to indulge in self-pity, but now she felt so isolated and alone again, and she hated it.

Alone again, with only her own thoughts and musings for company…

As crazy as it was, Rachel sometimes felt like she _wanted_ to tell somebody about her secret, if only because it could get to her at times.

_But she couldn't tell anyone her secret!_

…or could she?

The very idea of it was insane, it went against her very own personal rule of "don't tell anyone anything ever" which Rachel had established for herself as soon as she remembered everything in this world, and she was afraid of what would happen if she told anyone. And it was a perfectly valid concern, because the last thing she wanted or needed was to end up in an insane asylum. Or worse, what if some kind of government spooks or shadowy organizations got wind of it and wanted to get more out of her?

But then again, she now lived in a world where superheroes and supervillains existed, where people with crazy powers existed, and what could only be described as magic… so maybe something involving reincarnation and parallel universes wouldn't be too unbelievable?

Would they believe her if she told them about parasitic slugs from other planets, as well as the power to transform into animals to fight them? Would they believe her, especially if she told them about some of her wilder tales, like morphing out of control because her body couldn't handle acquiring crocodile DNA, or accidentally getting split in two as "Nice Rachel" and "Mean Rachel" who then had to be fused back together to create normal Rachel again?

But then it all led to a bigger problem: Could they understand if she explained to them just what she'd had to do to survive? How would they react if she told them of the approximate number of sentient beings she'd killed, human and alien alike?

And, worst of all, what about the fact that Rachel had _enjoyed_ fighting that war? That she'd been a warrior in need of a war?

Would they still want her to be their friend, let alone know her?

Deep down, maybe Rachel truly did want to tell someone, but she was just too afraid of what might go wrong and how anyone would react.

Growling and shaking her head in frustration, she pushed it out of her mind and decided to focus on something instead. She'd deal with this later.

Rachel's gaze wandered across the room… where it lingered on her headboard full of personal pictures.

She knew her own display like the back of her hand, and sure enough, her eyes roved over the pictures until she found the right one. There was her on vacation with her father André… there was her posing with President Camilla Hombee when the American superhero was visiting France last year… ah, there it was.

It was a picture of Chloé's twelfth birthday. There she was in the middle, between Marinette on her right and Adrien on her left (so from the viewer's perspective, it went Marinette-Chloé-Adrien from left to right). She had an arm around each of their shoulders, and Marinette smiled shyly for the camera while Adrien looked more calm and confident.

She felt a wave of bittersweet nostalgia wash over her as she looked at the photograph.

It was a snapshot of one of the happiest times of Chloé's young life.

Barely a week or so later, Chloé would wake up screaming in the middle of the night because she remembered everything as Rachel.

And without even thinking about it, her eyes wandered over to her walk-in closet, where she knew that a certain other picture lay hidden out of sight…

A box of Chloé Bourgeois' old things sat in the closest, mementos from her childhood which even now she just didn't have the heart to get rid of. Even without walking over to open the closet and then open the box within, she could just _see_ the box and its contents, visualizing them in her mind's eye. Hidden behind her old teddy bear Mister Cuddly was that picture she drew when she was five years old, the thing she saw in a "dream."

It was herself and her friends in morph: Rachel herself as a bear, Jake as a tiger, Tobias as a hawk, Cassie as a wolf, and Marco as a gorilla. And they were all gathered around some Andalite — was that supposed to be Elfangor or Ax? even she wasn't sure — who was holding the "blue box" which gave others the power to morph.

Deep down, Rachel both felt and knew that it was stupid to leave that thing lying around, but for some reason, _something_ stopped her from destroying it and obliterating every last trace of it.

So she just kept it there, hidden from view.

She was taken away from her current train of thought when her cell phone rang. But it wasn't Marinette's phone number…

* * *

"C'mon, pick up…" Adrien muttered. Knowing Chloé, she was probably suspicious at first because he didn't recognize the number he was calling from (it was a burner phone he kept, just in case).

Finally, she picked up. "Who is this?"

"Chloé, it's me."

"Adrien!? Where were you today? Are you alright?"

Adrien smiled a little. Even though Chloé was slightly younger than him, she had this "big sister" mentality and approach which he appreciated.

"I'm fine, Chloé," he reassured her. "I was almost at the front steps of the school when Nathalie and the Gorilla caught up with me, and I wasn't affected by that rock monster thing running around. Can you believe it was right outside the front gates?"

"I don't need to believe it, because I saw it on TV; I've seen your house enough times to recognize your front gates just like that."

"And how about you, are you OK?"

"I was never in danger, but I'm still just as concerned as anyone else."

"I bet it's a real circus on your end, huh?"

"Oh yeah. I'll be lucky to see my father at all today, with everything going on." And then, after a beat, she hastily added, "Oh shoot, I'm so sorry, Adrien, I wasn't trying to…"

"It's fine, Chloé, I know what you meant."

"And how about you and your family?"

"Oh, well, of course Father reprimanded me for trying to escape to school, but I haven't seen him since then."

"So he's angry about you trying to go to school, but not the least bit concerned about a supervillain practically on your doorstep?"

"I hate to say it, but it kinda looks that way."

"No comment."

"Still, now that you mention it… what did you think about those two new heroes, huh? Cat Noir and Ladybug?"

_Ladybug…_

Adrien felt a little strange as he thought about her. She was brave and confident and clever, and he'd liked her right away. And yet, at the same time, she seemed very familiar to him…

 _Bright blue eyes, jet black hair, slim build… have I met her somewhere before?_ he thought to himself.

But then he realized that Chloé was saying something, and he forced himself to pay attention to their conversation again.

"Huh?" he blurted. "Sorry, Chloé, can you repeat that again?"

"…I said: Do you really want me to answer that honestly, Adrien?"

"Why do you sound like that, Chloé?"

"Sorry, Sunshine, but the last person I just spoke to over the phone got upset by my critique of our new heroes."

"Come again?"

"To answer your question: Those two heroes seem to have their hearts in the right place, but they must clearly be new at all this, because they didn't know how to work together. And, not to sound too harsh, but the cat hero in particular seemed kinda reckless."

 _Me-ouch,_ Adrien wanted to remark, or at least he would have made that catty pun if he was the heroic Cat Noir and not plain old Adrien Agreste. His pride was a little bruised, but he couldn't hate Chloé for it; her no-nonsense attitude was one of the things he liked and admired about her as a friend.

Still, maybe she had a point there?

Off to one side, Adrien could see and hear Plagg softly cackling at him. No doubt the little kwami thought it was hilarious, watching Adrien get criticized for what he'd done as a superhero by his own best friend who had no idea that Adrien and Cat Noir were one and the same.

Then again, maybe he shouldn't have been surprised; after all, secret identity shenanigans were just part of the package when it came to being a superhero.

And then he remembered something else about the fight: The boy who had been Stoneheart seemed very familiar to him.

"Hey, Chloé," he spoke up. "That person who was the supervillain… after he changed back to normal, I mean… he seemed familiar. Have I met him before?"

"His name is Ivan," Chloé told him. "Ivan Bruel. I've had him as a classmate before too, so you might have met him at one of my birthday or holiday parties or something."

"Is he alright?"

"I dunno, I haven't been able to talk to him. I don't even know if he'll be at school tomorrow."

 _School. Tomorrow._ Adrien so badly wanted to think about that, but he didn't dare say anything about it out loud. He had no idea who could have been listening in on him at that moment.

And speaking of which… was that Father's footsteps he heard coming up the stairs outside his bedroom door?

He couldn't take a chance.

"Sorry, Chloé, but I need to go."

"Adrien, wait—"

But he had already hit the button to drop the call. He felt bad about it, but he couldn't risk getting caught.

Adrien was sure that Chloé would understand, but that didn't make it any less unpleasant for him.

Maybe — _hopefully_ — he could finally go to school tomorrow, and see Chloé and Marinette and all these other people again.

But until then, it was back to being alone all by himself.

And to think he'd woken up this morning looking forward to this day. Now he couldn't wait for this dismal day to end.

Adrien sat back down on his couch, watching Plagg continue to zip and zoom around his enormous bedroom, wondering what he could do next…

* * *

Across Paris, three different people, each in possession of a Miraculous, contemplated the day's events.

In her humble little home, Marinette Dupain-Cheng kept the Ladybug earrings safely locked away in their box, and privately berated herself for failing on her very first mission.

In his needlessly grandiose bedroom, Adrien Agreste dwelled on the day's events, wondering how he could fix the problem or keep fighting without his partner's help, even though he still had the Black Cat ring.

And in his secret lair, the one calling himself Hawk Moth could only cackle at how well things were going for him so far. It would only be a matter of time until he finally obtained the two most powerful Miraculous items and make his wish…

But unbeknownst to any of them, there was a fourth person in the city who was dwelling on it more than most, and for very unique reasons.

In her bedroom, the girl known as Chloé Bourgeois brooded, wishing once again that she still had the power to morph like she did back when she was truly Rachel. Or that she had any special power, really, because she wasn't that picky. It just agonized her to know that she had all this experience fighting dangerous enemies, but now had no way to put it to good use.

She thought back to her old friends and teammates.

"I could really use you guys right about now…" she muttered out loud.

She didn't know precisely what she and the other Animorphs could have done against an evil threat like this, but surely it would have been better than nothing at all.

For the first time since she got back her "Rachel memories" a few years ago, the girl known as Chloé Bourgeois slept very badly that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTES: ...Yeah, this part took forever, because not only did I need to rewatch "Origins" to get everything right (as well as account for AU differences, like Marinette and Adrien already knowing each other), but I fretted about how to handle the telephone conversation and dispute between Rachel/Chloé and Marinette.
> 
> Thanks again to both Khanofallorcs and Nomolosk for helping me with this! Not only with beta-reading, but to the former for helping me come up with a brand name like "Atelier #1600" as an alternative to "MDC" (the realization about Marinette's initials doubling as Roman numerals was my original idea, and I don't think anyone else has done that before) and to the latter for helping me with the telephone spat which gave me the most grief when writing this.
> 
> Also, if you're reading this on AO3, then you might have noticed the illustration in middle of the chapter, done by the talented **Misticdaisy** who I found through other fan art for this fandom. I give my thanks again to her, and you can find her on DeviantArt!


	7. Stoneheart, Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Origins redux continues; Stoneheart returns with more clones of himself, and a certain blonde girl has an important decision to make.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER DISCLAIMER: Bits and pieces from _The Ellimist Chronicles_ and _#54 The Beginning_ are cobbled together to show more of Rachel's original fate (SPOILER ALERT!), as well as a significant quote from _#27 The Exposed_ and a scary flashback from _#1 The Invasion_.  
> TRIGGER WARNING (albeit more for _Miraculous_ fans than _Animorphs_ fans): Considerable violence and some bloody details, but seeing as it was Rachel's final battle, that should be no surprise.  
> AUTHOR'S NOTES: I am SO SORRY it took this long to update. I was having problems with making this story work, and I was also dealing with a lot of crap in Real Life too. I promise it won't be months and months until the next update!  
> IMPORTANT NOTICE: So I had some fan art for this chapter commissioned (a certain "group photo") but it won't be done for a while, and I have a few other illustrations for this story in the works, so please be sure to check this story on AO3 often. I'll let you know when new illustrations are included!

She must have been dreaming and remembering again…

_The war was almost over, and this would be her final mission._

_The other Animorphs were taking the Pool ship, and on it, their nemesis Visser One (formerly Visser Three; his promotion had marked the beginning of the end for them)._

_But Rachel was infiltrating the deadly Blade ship, carrying out her grim final mission._

_On it were dozens of Controllers, and virtually all of them morph-capable, thanks to the Andalite morphing technology which they'd finally managed to steal for themselves. These Yeerks could tell that their Empire was finished and would fully collapse any day now, and so they hoped to escape and carve out a new place for themselves somewhere in the galaxy._

_And leading this little faction was Visser Seventeen, who up until this point was Visser One's head of security._

_And this Yeerk's host was someone who Rachel knew too well, someone she would have dearly loved to save but now couldn't save, because the Yeerk in his head had to die._

_(Never mind the fact that she'd also been assigned to do this in order to kill this same involuntary host, to put him out of his misery before he was lost to them forever. Did that technically make it a mercy killing, as opposed to just a murder?)_

_She knew she wouldn't be coming back from this alive, but as long as she managed to eliminate her sole target and get the job done, then she would go to her death without complaint._

_It was her final battle, and so Rachel decided to enjoy every moment of it. Becoming her beloved grizzly bear one last time, she engaged them all in combat, repaying each crippling blow to her with a killing blow to them. A polar bear, a cape buffalo, a pair of lionesses… she wasn't intimidated by any of them. She didn't let little problems like mangled limbs or ruined eyes stop her from fighting with all her strength, and within moments, the ship's deck displayed her violent handiwork. The deck was soon littered with the bodies of her fallen foes and slick with their blood, and various consoles and equipment were damaged in the savage battle._

_Rachel dimly registered the console for the ship's Z-space drive getting damaged in the struggle as her window of opportunity opened up. Maybe now they wouldn't be able to flee the solar system, and someone else could catch them? But now she could barely see anything now from all the damage she'd sustained…_

_Fortunately, her teammates were watching from the now-captured Pool ship, and they assisted her through the Yeerk ships' communication systems. Now she knew when and where to strike…!_

_And just like that, the horrible deed was done. Thanks to a grizzly bear's powerful jaws, the cobra — or rather, the Controller in cobra morph — was dead._

_And now she was dead too, for there was no getting out of this alive…_

_She demorphed one last time, if only so she could die as a human being and give one last message to her friends and teammates as they watched from the other ship..._

_And here came another Controller, this one in polar bear morph, raising his massive paw high…_

_Her enemy delivered the killing blow—_

But then the memory vanished in a flash, and Rachel was standing all alone in the darkness.

"What?" she exclaimed. "Where am I!?"

She looked around wildly, ready to call out for help, when she heard a new voice…

"Ah, Rachel, my favorite Animorph," a familiar voice sneered. "So, have you heard back from the Ellimist yet? Any clue as to whether he had anything to do with you being here, in this alternate universe? Maybe just to spite my boss Crayak?"

And then _it_ appeared.

A bipedal creature approached her, its body held forward and balanced by a stubby tail and walking like a bird or a small dinosaur. Its multiply jointed hands were these weak, flimsy things which must have been designed for very light work for very low gravity. Its head was vaguely human in shape, with a narrow lower jaw and wide-set, intelligent, laughing eyes. Its dark flesh was almost black and very wrinkled, while its eyes and mouth were rimmed in green.

Of course Rachel knew who it was; how could she forget a creature as vile as this one?

 _"Drode,"_ she snarled.

Crayak's lackey — this alien calling himself the Drode — stood before her, grinning his sick grin.

"Hello again, Rachel," he said jovially, as if he were greeting an old friend. "Still my favorite Animorph… well, even if you're not technically an Animorph anymore. So, how are you doing these days?"

She glowered at him.

"What, you don't like revisiting your Greatest Hits?" he grinned. "Especially not your swan song, it seems. What a pity, given the extravagance of your farewell tour…"

"Knock if off with all the music metaphors," she growled, trying not to think about all the sheer carnage and destruction she'd left in her wake. "Just get to the point."

"Oh, no point really, just stopping in to say hello and see how you were doing," Drode laughed, slowly walking around her. "And sure enough, you were revisiting your final battle. It always comes back to that, doesn't it? Obvious, really… so inevitable."

"Congratulations, you know how 'chronological order' works," she snarked. "Give yourself a gold star."

"Oh no, it's not that," the Drode sneered. "It's just fun for me, watching you revisit your worst memories, beating yourself up over it. How ironic, really… the last person you ultimately killed was one of the last people you ever wanted to kill. After all, _he_ was your brave leader Jake's main reason for fighting, wasn't he?"

Rachel held her tongue, not wanting to think about her own personal connections here. Guilt and shame clawed at her insides, ripping to tear her apart from the inside out…

"Still," the Drode said with a shrug, looking almost sympathetic, "can't really blame you there. The Yeerk in his head, Istudd Five-Zero-One, he was a really crazy little slug… and even by the standards of the ambitious and hypocritical Yeerk Empire, that's saying something."

"Hmph," she grunted, not wanting to think anymore about that particular Yeerk. Or any of the Yeerks, for that matter.

But before she could say anything else, the Drode suddenly interjected with something else:

"Besides, we got you to kill your cousin, didn't we? Just like I said we would?"

Those words shocked her to the core.

She remembered, all those years ago and in another universe, when the Drode first tormented her, tempted her with a metaphorical "Deal with the Devil"…

**_"If you ever find yourself desperate, Rachel. At the end. In need. Remember this: your cousin's life is your passport to salvation in the arms of Crayak."_ **

All that time, Rachel thought he'd been talking about getting her to kill her cousin Jake, the leader of the Animorphs. But no, perhaps he'd been slyly hinting at something else instead…

Were they actually trying to get her to kill Tom all along?

"Deep down you knew, didn't you?" Drode cackled.

Tom's fate flashed through her mind again, with the Yeerk controlling him — Istudd 501 — begging for mercy with Tom's voice…

‹ ** _Jake, stop her!_** ›

‹ ** _I'm sorry, Tom._** ›

Rachel cringed, trying not to remember it, with her grizzly bear jaws against his cobra body—

Clutching her head, she screamed.

"I HAD NO CHOICE!"

"Yeah, sure, keep telling yourself that," the Drode cackled. "You could have let him get away, be forever lost somewhere else in the galaxy… not the most ideal choice, but technically still a choice."

"Don't you dare play jailhouse lawyer with me," she snarled as she glared at him.

"Well, one thing's for sure, I wouldn't want to be _your_ lawyer representing you," the Drode cackled some more. "Think about it! Suppose you _did_ survive all that in the end; what would people have thought of you _then_? Would you and your merry little band of morph-capable rebels have been hailed as heroes, or tried as war criminals?"

As Rachel balked at him, he just grinned at her and continued: "Come on, now, you remember all those details from that final battle, don't you? Like how you overheard that report of the Pool ship flushing all that defenseless Yeerks into space? You just _know_ that Jake did that for your sake. What a hero, that sainted Jake Berenson! The leader of the Animorphs giving the order to flush more than seventeen thousand Yeerks — _more than seventeen thousand defenseless prisoners of war_ — into the freezing void of outer space… as a distraction all so you can kill just _one_ measly target. And even then, it was personal rather than strategic."

Rachel couldn't move, couldn't even breathe; she couldn't deny the horrible logic behind the Drode's words…

"Hm, maybe _that's_ why you volunteered for that suicide mission without much hesitation?" the Drode smoothly continued. "Because you didn't want to live the consequences of all the things you did, individually or as a whole with the rest of the team?"

Taking advantage of Rachel's continued stunned silence, the Drode laughed, "Heck, just think about it! Jake could be rotting in a jail cell even as we speak in the other universe! Maybe the rest of them too! Tobias, Cassie, Marco, anyone else lucky enough to survive… and don't think your alien friend Aximili would get off easy with his people either! Knowing those hypocritical sanctimonious Andalites, they probably would have treated him just as badly as Alloran after the Quantum Virus debacle way back when!"

Rachel didn't want to hear it anymore, and she definitely didn't want to imagine any of the others suffering like that. No way they could have been tried for war crimes; it was all self-defense! They were all heroes! _She_ was the one who did the dirty work so they could keep their hands clean!

She didn't have to take it from this monster pretending to be a sentient being. "Just get lost, Drode!"

"You know what?" Drode grinned. "I just can't help but keep thinking: It would be interesting, to see what your fellow Animorphs might say if they could think of you now…"

"Shut up."

"Living it up in Paris as a rich girl in a completely different universe, while they spend the rest of their lives cleaning up your mess back home…"

"Shut up!"

"I guess murdering your kin really has its rewards, huh?"

"I SAID SHUT UP!"

But Drode just cackled. "So easy to get a rise out of you. But then again, you were always the most violent and most reckless out of any of them, so that's to be expected."

Rachel fell silent but glowered at him.

"So," Drode leered as he clapped his hands together, "what fun will we have this time? Quite a life you got for yourself this time around. Those two new friends of yours, Adrien and Marinette, they both seem pretty nice… maybe we'll get you to kill them instead." He said this with a disgustingly cheerful tone, as if killing one's best friends was a perfectly normal and wholesome activity.

"DON'T YOU DARE!" Rachel roared.

"Or," Drode leered even more, "maybe I should tell them your big dark secret. Let them get acquainted with Rachel the Animorph. Let them know all the terrible things you've done in the name of a just cause. Let them see you at your most vicious and most savage. _Then_ we can see how much they like you after that."

Rachel growled and glared at the Drode, not trusting herself to say anything. If looks could kill, then he would have been reduced to ashes in the blink of an eye.

"Oh, heck, why not do both? _First_ expose your deep dark secret just for the shock value, _then_ get you to kill them," the Drode said cheerfully.

"GET OUT!"

"Alright, alright, I'm going," the Drode said, holding up his hands as if in surrender. But then, with a flick of his wrist like a magician with his playing cards, that picture of Chloé at her twelfth birthday party with Marinette and Adrien by her side appeared in his hand. And in the next instant, it burst into flame.

Rachel screamed in outrage, while the Drode chuckled as he leapt backwards, dropping the burning photograph which was ashes by the time it hit the ground.

"Come now, you didn't _really_ think you could escape the consequences of your old life forever, could you?" the Drode cackled. _"Because I'm going to enjoy watching you suffer this time around."_

And with that, he was gone in an instant.

And she just stood there, seething…

The Drode was gone… but Rachel still wasn't alone.

The scene around her, the very air itself, flashed blood-red…

Swallowing, Rachel looked up.

Looming over her was a towering bio-mechanical monstrosity, atop which sat a big red eye.

_And it was looking directly at her!_

Crayak — the same godlike being whom only the Ellimist could oppose, the master whom the Drode served — swiveled that big red eye directly at her, its gaze burning into her, an evil sun.

And then it _laughed_ at her.

With a flash of bright and fiery red light, Crayak's booming laughter resonated through everything, through her body, through her very soul, threatening to rip her apart to the most basic atoms…

* * *

She woke up screaming and gasping for air.

She felt horrible. Once again, not enough sleep.

After a few moments and realizing it was just a dream, she simply lay there in her bed fit for a princess, trying to wring as much rest out of it as she could.

Rachel knew it had to be a dream. After all, why would the Drode or his master Crayak appear to her in her sleep if either of them could just as easily do it in waking life by freezing time itself, just like the Ellimist could? But it still disturbed her.

It was one of her most shameful moments, arguably her worst memory of all: Being forced to kill Tom, her own cousin and Jake's older brother, in order to kill the Yeerk in Tom's head and "free" him.

It was the last thing Rachel did before she died, so naturally it all came back to that in the end.

She rolled over in bed and lay face down, pressing her face into the pillow as she tried to suppress her emotions and muffle any kinds of sounds she might make…

 _I'm sorry, Tom,_ she thought to herself as she pressed her face into her pillow as far as she could.

She had already killed so many Controllers aboard this ship, but there was only one Yeerk who she needed to kill: Visser One's chief of security, named Istudd 501. (Well, now _former_ chief of security, as he had turned traitor on Visser One himself.)

A Yeerk whose involuntary host just happened to be Rachel's cousin and Jake's older brother Tom.

And Tom's unfortunate plight as an involuntary host, as a slave to the Yeerk in his head, had been Jake's whole reason for fighting and for being their leader.

Jake had sent her to kill his own older brother. At least that way, Tom would be free in death and not a slave for the rest of his life, lost to them deep in space wherever the Blade ship was headed.

…Well, assuming that the Blade ship managed to escape from Earth at all; during her final fight on the Blade ship, the console for the ship's Z-space engine had been severely damaged. So maybe the rest of her side got lucky and they'd been able to stop those renegade Yeerks from escaping to parts unknown?

It didn't look like she would ever know for certain.

And she would need to live with that.

Except now it was spilling into this new life of hers.

Funny, Rachel thought to herself; she used to be afraid of whatever alien threats this new universe contained, but now she was also afraid of infecting everyone else here with her own kind of insanity.

And, as usual, all she could do was to keep it all secret and act normal. And that meant keeping her inner demons at bay.

Rachel lifted and turned her head to glance at both her bedside clock and the big window, and she could see that it was still too early.

And then she'd noticed that her face was wet, and the spot on the pillow previously occupied by her face was also damp.

She burned with shame. Thinking about her cousin Tom like that again must have hit harder than she thought it would.

Even after three years or so since she remembered everything, she still got upset enough, thinking about it and what she'd done. And she couldn't tell anyone about it.

As she wiped her face, Rachel took a moment to gaze out the window at the rosy dawn. She tried to set her mind at ease, and she went about getting ready for the next day.

After calling downstairs for breakfast, she turned her attention to her wardrobe. Part of her wanted to wear the same outfit as yesterday, as she didn't get to wear it for an entire school day, but she decided against it. Instead, she went with one of her more "casual" ensembles: A yellow T-shirt over a white long-sleeved shirt, a pair of black jeans, and blue sneakers.

She was done getting dressed just as the food arrived. "Good morning, Chloé," her butler greeted her as he wheeled in her breakfast.

"Good morning, Jean."

"I also come bearing a message from your father," Jean said dutifully. "He apologizes for not having seen you all day yesterday, and he hopes that you can understand how busy he is during this crisis."

Clearly, Jean was worried that Chloé would be upset by not having spent any time with her father for more than a day, but she just waved it aside.

"It's perfectly fine, Jean," she reassured him. "Like you said, it's a crisis. I can wait until he has spare time again."

Not that she didn't want to see her father, but truthfully, she was fine with not seeing him this morning, if only so he wouldn't see her like this.

"Actually," Jean added, peering over her shoulder, "we still need to do something about _that_."

She turned to see what he was looking at, and realized it was her punching bag, still lying on the ground from when it fell yesterday.

"Right, I didn't forget," Rachel said, turning back to Jean. "I suppose you could get someone to fix that while I'm at school today."

"Of course. I was just about to ask you, is there any special message you would like for me to pass along to your father?"

"Yeah… just let him know that I'm alright and I love him."

"That I shall. If there is nothing else, Mademoiselle."

"Nah, I'm good, Jean. Have a great day."

After he departed, Rachel ate her breakfast in peace. She felt better once she'd had enough to eat, and she got her things together to go to school.

As she passed the mirror, she stopped and took a good look at herself. She'd long since gotten used to seeing Chloé's face look back at her instead of Rachel's face, but a small part of her still mentally protested, insisting that it was wrong.

That, and she could see how tired and unhappy she looked.

But she refused to wallow in self-pity. Every time she got knocked down, she got back up. _Alright, so you had a bad day yesterday,_ she thought to herself. _A supervillain ran amok and you got into an argument with your best friend. But it's not the end of the world. You've dealt with so much worse than this; this is nothing compared to all that other stuff. You can — you will — get through this too._

Rachel struck a confident pose in the mirror, complete with her backpack sitting by her feet. _Yep, I look good to go._

And with that, she was gone, on her way to school again.

At least she didn't run into that other rich girl from yesterday in the lobby again. _Thank goodness for small miracles,_ she thought.

However, she could see the shift in tone and mood among the hotel's guests, compared to yesterday. It was the nervous feeling about whether or not they should check out and leave the city while all this was going on.

She didn't see anyone swarming the front counter, demanding to be checked out as soon as possible, but she could hear the various guests muttering things among themselves…

"I heard there's still a big gaping hole in the school where that rock monster first appeared…"

"What's the deal with that high-rise building that got knocked down? Was there anybody inside?"

"No, thankfully no one was actually _inside_ the building when it collapsed — it was empty because they were renovating it or something — but I heard lots of people around had to be rushed into the hospital for inhaling dust and stuff…"

"What about that boy who got turned into the rock monster in the first place?"

"What about all those other clones of the thing scattered around the city?"

"What about those two superheroes?"

Rachel grimaced as she recalled her telephone conversation with Marinette, and how she got her "best friend" upset by criticizing Ladybug and Cat Noir in that offhand way. She still needed to fix that.

Rachel got into the car, and she allowed herself to rest a little. Hopefully, she could catch five minutes' worth of sleep, maybe even ten minutes' worth if she was lucky.

"I know I'm really early again this morning, but no rush," she told the driver. "Please, take your time."

He nodded, and she leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes and letting her mind drift away…

_Rachel was back on the Blade ship, standing in the middle of her grisly handiwork._

_Her final mission was completed._

_And now she was destined to die alone._

_But she had one last message for her fellow Animorphs, especially for her boyfriend Tobias:_

**_"I love you."_ **

_She strayed strong; she had to stay strong, even as the rest of them turned away so they wouldn't see what would happen next…_

_A Controller in polar bear morph approached her and said to her,_ ‹ ** _You fight well, human._** ›

_And then he killed her with a single blow._

_…_

_Time stopped._

_The Ellimist came to her._

**_"You,"_ ** _Rachel said accusingly._

**_"Yes."_ **

**_"Who are you?"_ ** _she demanded._ **_"Who are you to play games with us? You appear, you disappear, you use us, who are you, what are you? I deserve an answer."_ **

**_"Yes,"_ ** _he said._ **_"You do. To this question I will give all the answer I know. And when you know me, you will ask another question. And I will answer that question too. And then…"_ **

_So he told his story to her. It spanned many millions of years, and the most important parts happened well before the dinosaurs themselves went extinct._

_That was how ancient he was. That was how far-reaching this whole drama was._

_And as he told his tale, she followed along the best she could, trying to understand…_

_Finally, he was done telling his tale._

**_"Now you know who I am. What I am."_ **

**_"Yeah. You were a kid. Like me in some ways, a kid who got in way too deep and couldn't get back out."_ **

**_"A kid."_ **

**_"You were trapped. You still are. I've been trapped."_ **

**_"Yes."_ **

**_"Was I one of your game pieces? Were all six of us just game pieces?"_ **

**_"I did not cause you to be one of the six. You are… you were… a happy accident. An unwitting contribution from the human race to its own survival."_ **

**_"You said I could ask one more question."_ **

**_"Yes."_ **

**_"I can't ask if we win, I can't ask if it will all turn out okay."_ **

**_"I don't know those answers."_ **

**_"Okay, then answer this, Ellimist: Did I… did I make a difference? My life, and my… my death… was I worth it? Did my life really matter?"_ **

**_"Yes. You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered."_ **

**_"Yeah. Okay, then. Okay, then."_ **

_Rachel wondered if—_

She jolted back awake with a start. It took her a moment to realize that it was her driver tapping the interior of the car, the window which separated the front from the back.

"We're here, Chloé," the driver told her. "I even went around the block a few times for you. You looked pretty out of it."

"Thanks," Rachel said a little weakly. Stifling a yawn, she said, "I needed to catch a few winks."

"Have a great day, Chloé!"

"Thanks, you too."

As she got out of the car and walked up the steps into the courtyard, she thought back to that last conversation with the Ellimist.

 _"A happy accident"_ — that was what he had called her. That was what she'd been in her previous life, when she was still truly Rachel.

But then… what she was doing here, in this life and in this world? What was all this — another happy accident?

Her merely being here certainly felt like an accident, but she didn't see anything "happy" about it.

If anything, she just felt "trapped" all over again.

And she couldn't stop thinking about it…

Was she still brave? Was she still strong? Was she still good? Did she still matter?

She had a feeling that if she were to wait for anyone to come along and answer those questions for her, then she'd be waiting a very long time.

She had just about given up on any higher power like the Ellimist appearing before her now to shed some light on the situation. After all, it wasn't as if that nigh-immortal, time-stopping meddler couldn't find the time just to talk to her for a few minutes.

Rachel collected herself. It was time to stop thinking about alien invasions and godlike higher powers and start worrying about school and homework again.

Her train of thought was derailed when she walked into the courtyard and noticed a large cluster of students in a distant corner. It was just about everyone in her class! And they were all gathered around Ivan, who looked like he just wanted to disappear into a hole in the ground.

"Hey, what's going on?" she muttered to Sabrina as she walked up to them.

"It's about Ivan," Sabrina said worriedly in a hushed tone, standing on the edge of the group. "He was Stoneheart."

"Yeah, I saw that video too," Rachel muttered to her.

"And he doesn't remember anything," Sabrina added, "but that doesn't seem to stop most people from asking about it anyway."

Then something else occurred to Rachel. "Wait, I saw your dad get injured," she realized. "How's he doing?"

Sabrina grimaced a little. "He's doing alright, but his arm will be in that sling for a while."

The rest of their classmates were clustered around, asking Ivan what it was like, and the boy was becoming increasingly agitated.

Rachel sighed. She really felt bad for Ivan.

She couldn't help but wonder how much it was like being an involuntary host, a slave to a Yeerk in one's own head…

She thought back to that one time, relatively early on in their war, when Jake had accidentally fallen into a tub of dying Yeerks and had been infested by one of them. They'd figured it out almost right away when he snapped at Ax, calling him " _Andalite filth!"_ So they'd kept Jake tied up in an abandoned old shack in the woods and kept a watch on him. Meanwhile Ax himself morphed Jake and pretended to be him for three consecutive days as they starved the Yeerk to death, fooling the rest of Jake's family.

Even now, Rachel remembered how deeply affected Jake had been by that whole experience, once he was free and in control of his own body again.

Pushing those thoughts aside, Rachel decided to see what she could do for her friends here and now, in this life. She turned her attention back to Ivan who was being bombarded with questions from their classmates…

"So you really don't remember anything?" Alix asked Ivan.

"You were totally going ballistic. It was so cool!" Juleka exclaimed, with what Rachel personally felt was too much enthusiasm for a situation like this.

And sure enough, Kim was still being his usual self, even after what had happened with Ivan.

"Dude, you almost killed me!" Kim exclaimed.

"Oh, I'm sorry… I wasn't myself…" Ivan muttered.

"Oh, give him a break, Kim," Rachel interjected, walking up to them. "Either way, you shouldn't have been egging him on in the first place."

Everyone else turned to look at her. Kim reared back as if she'd slapped him. "Well, how was I supposed to know he would get all angry and turn into a monster on me?"

Now Ivan looked furious at being called a "monster."

"Don't listen to him, Ivan," Rachel said. "You're not a monster."

He seemed to calm down a little, and looked a little grateful to her too. "Thank you, Chloé," he mumbled.

"Anytime, Ivan."

And for a moment, there was blissful silence, as everyone tried to figure out what to discuss next…

But then someone else strode up to their group to cause trouble.

"Wait, I know you," a female voice with an Eastern European accent said.

Rachel turned around, and who should it be but that other girl from the hotel. She was wearing the same outfit again today, as well as a lot of make-up which (in Rachel's honest opinion) made her look more ridiculous than attractive.

_So much for small miracles,_ she thought to herself as she resisted the urge to curse out loud. Now she had to play it cool.

Rachel also took into account the large boy standing behind her, a boy just as tall as Kim but also quite fat. In fact, he was so fat that he looked like he should be forced to skip some meals, especially with those multiple chins. His short, straw-color hair seemed pasted onto his scalp, and his hazel eyes looked like little rocks in their sockets. He was wearing a flannel shirt as well as suspenders which seemed to be at their limit.

"We meet again," Rachel said diplomatically, turning her attention back to the girl. "So that was you who checked into my family's hotel yesterday? I hope you're enjoying your accommodations. I'm—"

 _"Chloé Bourgeois,"_ the other girl interrupted her, almost sneering the words as if they were something nasty. "Yes, I know who _you_ are. But do you know who _I_ am?" Putting her hand to her chest, the other girl declared, "I am Irina Afanasyeva, daughter of Nikolai Afanasyev the Russian energy mogul!"

"Right, I've heard of you," Rachel replied. "Welcome to our fair and beautiful city of Paris."

"And you'd better welcome me!" Irina scoffed. "My father is currently in talks with yours to include Paris and the rest of France with his trans-continental pipeline for oil and natural gas! How else do you expect to keep the lights on in the City of Lights? Without us, you'd burn out in no time!" And then she chuckled at her own joke as if it was the funniest thing in the world.

Rachel merely raised an eyebrow, even as she fought to keep her irritation at bay. She knew this type of girl too well; lots of rich girls acted like this one, more or less.

It was also much like the type of girl _she_ used to be as Chloé, before her "Rachel memories" came bubbling up to the surface, bit by bit.

"Oh, and this is Dieter Stern, my best friend," Irina added, as if it were a mere afterthought. "Our fathers are friends, so I guess that makes us friends too."

Rachel couldn't help but cringe at what Irina was saying and just how she was saying it. Honestly, this girl was the living embodiment of the spoiled rich girl!

" _Ja_ , nice to meet you," Dieter spoke up, with a noticeable German accent. "You should all be pleased to meet Irina Afanasyeva, she's the best girl I know!"

He looked like he wanted to say more than that, but Irina swiftly cut him off. "Hush, Dieter, let the important kids talk," Irina snapped, her voice like a cracking whip.

Dieter instantly shut up, although he did look rather disappointed at not being allowed to talk.

"So, Irina," Rachel began, "if you don't mind my asking, what are you doing here at this school?"

"Oh, well, since I'll have to be here for a while, Daddy thinks I should go to school here — honestly, like I can't just use all my tutors!" She scoffed. "But Daddy thinks it will be good for me, so I guess I can make him happy."

Something about the way she said that made Rachel wonder about Irina's maturity and mental age. But it also did nothing to quell the growing irritation she felt at having to listen to this other girl…

"Anyway," Irina continued babbling, "I heard such good things about this school, and I figured that it _must_ be good, because Daddy mentioned it _and_ the mayor sends his own daughter to this place! But looking around…" (here, she made a dramatic display of looking around the courtyard, but especially focusing on Rachel's classmates) "…I'm shocked, just shocked I tell you, by certain elements around here!"

Rachel could hear them muttering angrily behind her, and could even _feel_ them bristling behind her. Her protective side came out, the one which was always ready to defend her friends…

"Please, Irina, define 'certain elements' for us," Rachel ground out, really starting to lose her patience.

"Oh, you know," she whispered conspiratorially, _"commoners."_ Then raising her voice back up to normal levels, she declared, "Girls like you and I really shouldn't associate with such common people. I keep hearing about how people call you 'the Princess of Paris,' but I don't see anything special or noble about you, Chloé Bourgeois."

"If you knew anything about me, then you'd know _why_ the people like me so much," Rachel hissed. "And it's not because of my family or its wealth and power."

While Rachel wasn't that big a fan of the "Princess of Paris" moniker, even if it was meant as an affectionate nickname, she could see why the people of Paris did that; she had a reputation as someone who genuinely cared about other people. Whenever she did something like a fundraising campaign for disease research or visiting sick children in the hospital for Christmas, people noticed and could see the sincerity in her actions and her words. A few people here and there had accused the Bourgeois heiress of only doing it to make herself look good or bolster her father's political image, but they were drowned out by the majority of people who could tell that she meant it.

(What nobody knew was that Chloé Bourgeois — _Rachel_ — also did it out of a sense of guilt for her past sins, and because it helped keep her mind busy so she wouldn't think too much about her bloody past. Maybe that made her good deeds just a tad selfish, but she had to cope somehow.)

"For goodness' sake, you're even _dressing_ like them today!" Irina exclaimed, gesticulating wildly at Rachel's apparel for the day. "What happened to that outfit from yesterday? That looked so much better than what you're wearing right now!"

"Gee, I didn't know I needed to consult you," Rachel retorted with a hard roll of her eyes. "I've got fashion sense to spare, thank you very much.

"And for that matter," Rachel added, before Irina could speak up again, "watch what you say about my friends and classmates. I don't need to hear this kind of crap from you or anyone else. Let me put this into terms I think you might understand: If they're 'commoners' then they're _my_ 'commoners.' You got that?"

Irina just balked and stared at Rachel as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing. "We'll talk more later, just try not to offend _everyone_ here at Francois Dupont before the day is out," Rachel said, turning away to rejoin her classmates.

But then Irina's voice said something which made Rachel freeze in her tracks: _"Ridiculous, utterly ridiculous!"_

Rachel jolted, in spite of herself. Did this other girl really just quote her mother, Audrey Bourgeois herself, the self-anointed "Style Queen" of the fashion world?

Rachel turned around to look at Irina again, and the Russian girl was grinning nastily at her. "Isn't that the Style Queen's catchphrase? Papa was just finishing up some business deals in New York City about a year ago, and I got to meet Audrey Bourgeois herself! Truly a bold and fearless woman, knows what she's doing! Although…" (and here Irina tapped her finger to her chin, as if pondering something which she already knew the answer to) "… she never said anything about her daughter and only child." Dropping her hand from her face, Irina then leaned in and said with a nasty grin: _"Almost as if she didn't even have one!_ "

Rachel might have had thick skin, but she also had a no-nonsense attitude which could be dangerous when combined with her hostility, and right now Irina was really getting under her skin.

But try as she might, Rachel couldn't help but think of all the younger years in this life when she was a spoiled brat, acting like Audrey just because Audrey herself couldn't be bothered to be there. It all went back to that "business trip" which Audrey never really came back from, except for the occasional visit to Paris for Fashion Week over the years, and with little Chloé Bourgeois wondering _why won't Mommy come back home and be with me again…_

And since then, she had truly come to loathe the Style Queen's infamous catchphrase: _"Ridiculous, utterly ridiculous!"_ In fact, Rachel now loathed it so much that she absolutely refused to say it, and wouldn't even use the words "utterly" and "ridiculous" in the same sentence if she could help it.

And as much as Rachel missed her original mother and father from her previous life, she dearly wished she could have at least had a stable loving family this time around. With all due respect to André and Audrey Bourgeois, they'd made it so easy in the past for her to miss and long for Dan and Naomi Berenson instead. (Even if, to be fair, André Bourgeois had come a long way as a father since then…)

Between missing everything she'd had as Rachel Berenson and rueing her messed-up childhood as Chloé Bourgeois, it really rankled at her.

And she could just feel herself getting so angry…

Irina was still shooting her mouth off, saying something nasty, but whatever it was, Rachel couldn't hear it, because now she felt her blood pressure rising as she glared at the newcomer…

Whatever Irina was going to say next died on her lips, and she finally noticed the furious look etched on Chloé Bourgeois' face. Suddenly, the Russian girl didn't look so confident anymore. No, now she looked more afraid than anything. And out of the corner of her eye, Rachel could see Irina's lackey Dieter starting to look scared, his eyes comically wide.

And by now, the rest of the class had noticed, too…

"Uh-oh," Nino muttered behind her. "Now you've done it, new girl."

"Everybody, back away slowly," Kim declared in hushed but dramatic tones.

"Chloé, please don't do anything stupid," Sabrina whispered to her.

Rose made some fearful whimpering sounds and Juleka tried to comfort her.

"Well, this oughta be good," Alix drawled. She may have sounded more eager than scared, but Rachel could detect a note of worry in the tomboy's voice.

Rachel couldn't blame them. By this point, the now-infamous "Chloé Bourgeois Death Glare" had that effect on people. And now, it was Irina Afanasyeva who was transfixed by a glare which could have melted steel.

Rachel supposed that she should have been flattered that her own classmates thought she was formidable, but for now, all she could focus on was this newcomer Irina and putting the Fear of God into the other girl.

"Hey, come now," Irina said nervously, "no need for that. We were just having a friendly chat, that's all." She tried to laugh it off, but it came out strained and died in her throat.

No one else knew precisely _how_ the young Bourgeois heiress managed to look so terrifying, but Rachel knew it had to be something to do with her leftover anger and fury from her previous life. It was somewhere between _"Don't mess with me or my friends"_ and _"Don't mess with me, because I used to kill aliens FOR FUN!"_

"Well then," Rachel said smoothly, taking a step towards Irina and causing the other girl to stumble back and making Dieter catch her. "Why don't we cease with the hostilities and resume this conversation some other time… _friend?_ " (But the way she said it made it clear to everyone present just what Chloé Bourgeois thought of Irina Afanasyeva, and it wasn't as a friend.)

It was at times like these that Rachel almost — _almost_ — wished that she could let others know just who and what she really was, if only to see their reactions. _If only you knew what I could do,_ she would think to herself. _If only you knew just how awesome and terrifying I used to be…_

With her back now pressed against Dieter's large gut, Irina could only look up in fear as the "Princess of Paris" stared her down. Despite the two girls being the same height, somehow the Bourgeois heiress managed to loom over the Afanasyev heiress.

With a growl worthy of her old grizzly bear morph, Rachel growled, _"Back off."_

"Alright, alright, just back off yourself!" Irina squealed, almost _shrieking_ the words. Forcing herself to calm down, Rachel acquiesced and backed off.

"Weirdo," Irina muttered, trying to regain her composure and making it look as if nothing had happened to scare her, but failing in that regard. And then Irina flinched again when Rachel shot her a fresh new glare, as if to say, _"I heard that!"_

"Come, Dieter, let's get out of here," Irina declared, as if she hadn't just been scared senseless from picking a fight with the wrong girl.

Rachel watched the pair of them go, eyeing them like a cat eyeing its prey and ultimately deciding to let it go. Once Irina and Dieter were gone from sight, she noticed that she'd gotten some curious spectators scattered around the courtyard. She coolly glanced at all of them as if to say, _"What are you all looking at?"_ Taking the hint, they continued to go about their business as if nothing had happened.

As she closed her eyes and tried to make herself calm down, she heard someone else from behind her. "Uh, Chloé?" Alix spoke up. "You alright there, girl?"

Breathing deeply and her eyes still closed, Rachel muttered just loud enough for them all to hear: _"What a bitch."_

That got several gasps and a few giggles as well.

"And just in case there was any doubt, _no,_ I don't agree with a single word she said," Rachel added, opening her eyes again and turning around to face them.

"We know, Chloé," Nathaniel spoke up, smiling shyly at her. Rachel felt the corners of her lips twitch upwards.

"We honestly thought you were going to hurt her," Mylène said in hushed tones. "Especially after what you did to that one jerk last time…"

There were only a handful of times when Rachel (as Chloé) had chosen to resort to physical violence in order to protect herself and others, but each time was unforgettable in its own right.

That aforementioned last time, some random jerk on the street had tried getting a little too close and handsy with her. One moment, his hand was grazing her hip, and the next moment, she was breaking his arm.

"That was because that jerk was trying to get fresh with me, and you all know that," Rachel replied, not missing a beat. "Come on, it was self-defense."

"Self-defense," Alix repeated. "Right…"

But then she noticed that one of their group was missing. "Wait, where did Ivan go?" she asked her classmates.

"He left, but we don't know where he went," Nathaniel mumbled.

"I think Marinette was heading in that direction too," Rose piped up. "Maybe she can help him? She's good at helping other people with their feelings."

"I reckon that the odds of that are extremely high, somewhere near ninety percent," Max added. "Perhaps Marinette can help Ivan with what's bothering him."

"Wait, what?" Rachel said. "Marinette was here?"

"We saw her passing by with Alya while you were glaring down that other girl," Juleka explained. And then she added, with a little too much enthusiasm: "Chloé, you gotta teach me how to glare like that!"

Rachel wasn't sure quite how to respond to that, but luckily, Rose spared her from having to give a response.

"No, Juleka!" Rose protested. "There's enough hostility in the world as it is, you don't need to add to it!"

Rachel chuckled softly. Rose might have been the same age as the rest of them, but between the other girl's short stature, bright blue eyes, pixie cut and constantly upbeat attitude, it was kind of hard for Rachel not to think of Rose as being like the "little sister" of the group.

Just then Max noticed the time. "Actually, everyone, we should get to class…"

"You guys go ahead, I want to wait for Adrien, see if he shows up today," Rachel said.

"You really think he'll show up today?" Mylène spoke up.

"Couldn't hurt to find out," the blonde replied with a shrug.

The rest of her classmates walked off to their homeroom… but someone stayed behind.

"What is it, Sabrina?" Rachel said, when she noticed the bespectacled ginger staying put and watching her with a concerned expression.

"You really didn't like dealing with her, did you?" Sabrina asked in a hushed tone. "Did it dredge up too many bad memories?"

Neither girl said it aloud in case anyone could hear them, but they both knew what Sabrina was referring to: That brief period, many years ago, when Chloé Bourgeois and Sabrina Raincomprix were supposedly best friends. (Emphasis on the word "supposedly," because neither the bossy brat Chloé nor the subservient pleaser Sabrina really knew what true friendship was back then.)

Once again, Rachel sighed and closed her eyes, trying not to cringe at the memories of some of the things she did back then as spoiled little Chloé Bourgeois. "It was like looking into some kind of creepy funhouse mirror," she muttered to Sabrina, eyes still scrunched shut.

Rachel tried not to flinch when she felt Sabrina take her hand in her own. Opening her eyes, she looked down at Sabrina, who looked back up at her with a comforting expression.

"It's ancient history, Chloé," Sabrina said reassuringly. "You know that, I know that, and I'm sure they all know that too."

"Thanks, Sabrina," Rachel said, clasping her hand with Sabrina's hand in a small but meaningful gesture of respect and friendship.

"So… I take it you're still waiting for Adrien?" Sabrina said as they separated.

"Yeah, don't worry, I'll be there before the bell rings," Rachel claimed.

Sabrina nodded and hurried off to their homeroom.

And as Rachel stood around waiting for Adrien, she remembered what she'd been thinking about earlier when she first walked into the school building this morning.

_Should she tell Marinette her big secret or not?_

She didn't have that much time remaining, so she made every second count as she thought hard about it. Her own footsteps echoed in her ears, like a clock counting down…

Rachel needed to make a decision by the time she reached the classroom…

* * *

Adrien rushed as he outran Nathalie and the Gorilla to get to school before they could stop him again.

Yesterday had been a bust, but today he was absolutely determined to go to school, no matter what.

If anything, today was progress for him; not only had he managed to get there on time even with Plagg pestering him every step of the way, but _this_ time, he even got as far as the front steps before Nathalie and the Gorilla caught up with him.

And just like that, he was inside the building before they could stop him.

Maybe later, he would feel really guilty for disobeying them like that… but for now, he basked in his success. He'd finally made it to school!

 _And now to find my friends,_ he thought, his heart bursting with happiness.

He quickly scanned the courtyard, looking for any sign of Chloé or Marinette… and sure enough, he found his oldest friend.

"Chloé?" he shouted aloud, trying to call out to her. "Hey, Chloé!"

Her head whipped around, and she smiled brightly. Adrien always admired her for how brave and fearless she was. "There you are!"

Chloé immediately grabbed her book bag and made her way towards him. "Well, good to see you finally made it!" she remarked as they approached each other. Embracing her like a sister, he kissed and hugged her. "Welcome back, Adrien!"

And just then everyone noticed that it was _Adrien Agreste_ among them, and sure enough, some people asked for autographs.

Uncertain, he turned to Chloé for advice. "Do you think I should…?"

"Whatever you want, Adrien," she replied confidently, stepping back to give him some space and let him deal with his fans. That was another good thing about Chloé, Adrien mused: As protective as she was of her friends, she knew when to step back and let others handle things on their own.

To his relief, most of these kids — _his fellow students!_ he realized with a jolt of excitement — were cool about it, just happy to say hello and shake his hand and get his autograph. And since this school and its student population weren't too large, it didn't take too long to get through the crowd as they walked along with them.

"Well, that was fun, and they all seem nice," Adrien commented with a smile. "Now I can't wait to see Marinette and the others, and — Chloé, what's wrong?"

Once the last of them had gone on their merry way, Chloé's smile faded and she began to look serious again. Adrien had known her for long enough to know that something was really bothering her.

"What is it, Chlo?" he asked her quietly.

"Adrien," she began, "do you remember yesterday when I called? I said that the last person I spoke to wasn't happy to hear what I had to say about those new superheroes?"

Of course Adrien remembered; he remembered the sting of Chloé's blunt but innocent criticism of both Ladybug and Cat Noir. And, of course, he also had to remember that Chloé had no way of knowing that he was really Cat Noir.

Adrien nodded, and so she continued: "Well, that person was Marinette."

Grimacing a little, Chloé explained, "Just before you called me, I was talking to _her_ on the phone, and she got upset at something I said. All I did was comment on how Ladybug and Cat Noir did for their debut appearance — not bad, but could have been better — and then she flipped out. She even hung up on me."

Adrien blinked, trying to visualize Marinette Dupain-Cheng doing that, even merely sounding like that over the phone. She was such a sweet girl who rarely if ever got angry; he couldn't even remember the last time she'd lost her temper with anybody or anything.

"She got mad because you criticized Ladybug and Cat Noir?" Adrien asked, repeating the words just to make sure he followed.

"Yeah… I don't get it," Chloé said with a sigh. "I mean, I wasn't _trashing_ them or anything, more like just thinking out loud."

"Well," Adrien said, thinking it over, "maybe she got upset because she thought you meant that you thought we were doomed? You know, just because those two superheroes didn't do a perfect job the first time?"

Chloé looked down, thinking it over. "Maybe," she said at last. "Not at all how I meant it, but I suppose she could have taken it that way." Looking back up at Adrien, she added, "So yeah, she and I still need to talk when we get the chance."

"That's it?" Adrien asked. "She was so upset with you that she hung up on you and hasn't talked to you since?"

"Well," Chloé said slowly, looking sideways, "we might have also argued a bit about something else between me and her. Just a little tiff between us girls, nothing for you to worry about." Suddenly shaking her head and waving her hands in front of her, she added, "Look, just don't bring it up, alright? Just act normal when we both see her again."

Adrien couldn't help but wonder just what had transpired between the girls, but he knew better than to pry. Whenever something like "girl stuff" was invoked as a reason, it was a big sign for him to back off and not get involved.

"Sure thing, Chloé," he reassured her.

She relaxed and smiled at him. "Thanks, Adrien."

And as they walked towards the classroom, Adrien noticed two other girls, one of whom he recognized right away.

"Marinette! Is that you?"

* * *

Marinette had woken up feeling lousy that morning, especially as she recalled the previous day's events. Between seeing one of her classmates transform into a supervillain, her botched job as a superhero meant to combat that, and then the way her best friend Chloé had been acting all the while.

Groaning, she got out of bed and got ready for the new day.

Her parents had noticed her sadness, and had tried to comfort her. She grinned just a little at her father joking about being a hero named "Super Baker" and coming to the rescue, but it was gone just as quickly.

"It's not just the superheroes and supervillains, Dad," she said at last.

"Then what is it?" Mr. Dupain gently asked.

Marinette began to speak, wanted to tell them about what happened with Chloé yesterday, from the other girl's reaction to the supervillain to the phone call between them which had gone badly… but ultimately said nothing.

It would have felt too much like talking about Chloé behind her back, and Marinette didn't want to do that. No, she would leave her parents out of this, and only turn to them if things really got worse between herself and Chloé.

"Marinette?" she heard her father's voice saying, as it cut through her thoughts.

"Hm? Oh. It's nothing, Dad, really. Just school stuff, not really related to this."

"Well, supervillains aside, is everything alright at school?" Mrs. Cheng asked gently. "That is, are you getting along well with the other students?"

"Oh yeah, definitely," she said, making herself smile a little. "Everyone's fine. We even got one or two new students, and they're really nice."

"Good to know that something good came out of yesterday," her mother replied with a reassuring smile.

"See?" her father said. "Not everything is horrible. You might have even made a new friend yesterday. Speaking of which, don't forget to get ready for school today!"

As she finished her breakfast, Marinette marveled at how optimistic her parents were. Even in a situation like this, with supervillains running around Paris, they still knew how to make their daughter feel better.

"Thanks, Super Dad!" she said. "You too, Super Mom!"

Pleased, her parents gave her a nice big group hug, and she got her things together to go to school.

Marinette winced when she recalled the Ladybug Miraculous — and Tikki herself — being stored away in that small container. Grimacing and resisting the urge to break down again, she retrieved the small container and stashed it in her purse with certainty and resolve.

Hopefully, she could find someone more worthy of it than she.

Her relatively good mood lasted the entire walk there, and she was glad to not have to rescue any old folks from oncoming cars again, but then she bumped into Alya as the other girl was securing her bicycle to the rack.

And the other girl just wouldn't stop going on about the new superheroes…

 _How would she react if she knew that I'm Ladybug?_ Marinette thought to herself. _Or rather, that I_ was _Ladybug, but not anymore?_

Marinette had walked with Alya, waiting for the opportunity to pass off the Ladybug Miraculous to somebody she hoped would be a more worthy wielder.

Marinette had already been thinking back and forth as to whether to bequeath the Ladybug Miraculous to Chloé or Alya. On the one hand, Chloé was a tough girl, and she'd gotten tougher over the last few years… but on the other hand, Marinette thought back to the other girl's dark period, and she wasn't sure she could put Chloé through more hell like that again. Especially considering what happened yesterday…

And in a case of pure serendipity, there was Chloé staring down some other girl while most of their classmates watched with apprehension. Marinette's gut instantly pooled with dread; even from here, she could just _feel_ the anger radiating off the blonde…

As she was trying to figure out what was going on, Marinette noticed Ivan stalking off in a huff.

And so Marinette had graciously parted ways with Alya just to find Ivan and try to figure out what was wrong.

And that was how Marinette ended up sitting next to Ivan, hearing what the problem was.

"Chloé didn't do anything wrong," Ivan told her. "This other girl, this rich new girl, Irina… she was giving me grief because of what happened yesterday…" (And here he grimaced, clearly not wanting to think about that.)

"Wait, so Chloé was sticking up for you back there?" Marinette asked for clarification.

"Yeah."

Yup, Marinette thought to herself, that sounded just like Chloé. The blonde girl was no bully; on the contrary, she was like an "anti-bully," if such a thing existed.

But at the same time, there were occasions when Chloé could take things a bit too far in her defense of others. Case in point: Marinette still remembered that one time, about a year or so ago, when some jerk on the street had called her a nasty anti-Asian slur after she'd accidentally bumped into the stranger. While Marinette was still trying to process what had just happened, Chloé was on the other person in a heartbeat. She was slamming her knee into his gut and then strangling him with her bare hands, as well as threatening to rip his tongue out ("…and make a bow tie out of it!" she'd threatened him) if he didn't apologize right away to Marinette for such disgusting language.

True, Marinette had been a little flattered that her best friend Chloé would go to such lengths for her, and she was secretly glad that she'd gotten an apology… but even after that jerk had choked out that apology and had promptly scampered off, Marinette was still a little rattled from seeing Chloé act like that. It was a little unnerving to her to see Chloé go from "well-behaved young lady" to "violent brawler" — and back again — with the flip of a switch.

Bringing her attention back to the present as well as Ivan's current predicament, Marinette offered what she'd hoped was sound advice for helping him reach out to Mylène. As Ivan got up to go, Marinette felt a little pleased with herself, hoping she'd done the right thing.

After Ivan had hurried off to try and win over Mylène, Marinette met up with Alya again to get to Ms. Bustier's classroom. And in doing so, Marinette was brought back to the real pressing issue at hand: _Should she give the Ladybug Miraculous to Chloé or to Alya?_

On the one hand, Marinette had only just met Alya, while she'd known Chloé for years… but on the other hand, she was all too familiar with how temperamental and terrifying Chloé could be if provoked, and she didn't sense that kind of problem with Alya…

Besides, Alya was right here, and Marinette didn't know where Chloé was at the moment.

She might not get the opportunity like this again…

But then Marinette saw something else right in front of them, catching her by surprise.

_It was Adrien!_

He was talking to Chloé (and Marinette felt a small pang of sadness as she recalled yesterday's argument), and both of them were also talking to other students who were greeting Adrien and asking for his autograph which he happily provided for them.

"…Marinette? Marinette!" a voice was urgently whispering to her. She jolted and turned to see Alya peering at her. "Are you alright, girl?"

"Yeah, um, uh," she stuttered. "Adrien…"

"Yeah, I know, it's Adrien Agreste," Alya said matter-of-factly, although Marinette could detect a hint of eagerness in her voice.

"Yeah, I know it's him!" Marinette protested a little defensively. "I've known him just about as long as I've known Chloé!"

"Great, now you can introduce me!" Alya said optimistically. "Because here he comes!"

Marinette felt a sudden urge to panic and run away, but before she could do anything, she heard his voice calling out to her: "Marinette! Is that you?"

Swallowing hard, Marinette gathered whatever courage she could and greeted him in return: "H-h-hi, Adrien, good to see you again! You're looking well."

She hadn't seen him for months, and he'd definitely grown a little since then. His blond hair and green eyes were as bright as she'd ever seen them, and he still had his boyish good looks…

He was also getting his first good look at her in that same length of time, his eyes taking her in. "You look great too, Marinette," she said in that calm, easy way which she found endearing. "So, how is it here at this school?"

"Great, but even better now that you're here!" she heard herself blurting out, and then she noticed Adrien bearing a slightly confused expression… before breaking out into an even bigger smile which made most girls go weak in the knees.

_Oh dear Lord, what was wrong with her?_

And off to the side, she saw both Chloé and Alya watching this back-and-forth exchange, with what looked like a little too much interest.

And then Marinette heard Alya clearing her throat. "Oh, I'm sorry, where are my manners," Marinette stammered, secretly grateful for the distraction. "This is Alya Césaire, she's new here too."

"A pleasure to meet you, _Mademoiselle_ Césaire," Adrien said with a flourish as he took her hand.

"You too," Alya replied, taking it in stride. "And aren't _you_ quite a charmer."

"Nah, I'm just a gentleman," Adrien replied, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

While Alya and Adrien were making small talk to get to know each other a little better, Marinette made eye contact with Chloé. The blonde looked uneasy and somewhat contrite, and couldn't quite meet Marinette's eyes.

The chatter between Alya and Adrien seemed to fade into background noise as Marinette tried and failed to say something. Between her mistakes as Ladybug, Chloé's criticisms of Ladybug when she had no way of knowing that it was really Marinette, and Marinette herself losing it and flying off the handle like that… there was so much to get sorted out.

Marinette wanted to fix everything and get her best friend back, but where to begin?

The aspiring designer was thrown off that train of thought when Alya suddenly exclaimed something.

"Hey, how about we take a picture?" Alya suggested excitedly, grinning brightly as she whipped out her smartphone. "You know, to celebrate Adrien finally coming here? Come on, Sunshine Boy, front and center! Marinette, Chloé, on either side of him…"

Adrien responded almost automatically (he was so used to this as a model), but as he thought about it, he finally said, "Great idea, Alya. I'd love that."

So both other girls fell in next to him, with Chloé on his left and Marinette on his right.

Adrien put his arms around both of them, and Marinette put her left arm around his shoulders too… but even as she posed for the picture, she kept feeling kind of funny…

"…And DONE!" Alya declared, snapping a couple of pictures.

The trio of friends disentangled and approached Alya to see the picture, and they were pleased with the results. "Wow, it looks really good, Alya!" Marinette complimented her.

"Send it to me, and I'll share it with the rest of the class… discreetly, of course," Chloé suggested.

"Yeah, make sure Father doesn't see," Adrien added. "I don't think he'd be happy with anyone taking pictures of me without his permission."

Alya's enthusiasm looked a little dampened by that, and Marinette could just see Alya's thumb hovering over the "send" button to send it to the rest of the class, but she understood. "Don't worry, sure thing!" she reassured them. "Just give me a moment here… alright, done!"

And with that, Chloé's phone pinged, and she smiled as she saw how it came out. With just a few commands, she sent the picture to Marinette and Adrien as well, and that was that.

Chloé strode over to the classroom door to open it, and smiling at Adrien, she said, "Well, what are you waiting for? Class starts in a few minutes."

Looking delighted, Adrien nodded to her in gratitude and entered, with the girls following right behind him.

As Adrien walked into the classroom, there was a sudden hush… followed by a happy uproar.

"Wow, it really is Adrien!"

"Who'd have thought he'd be in our class this year?"

"Glad to see you finally showed up, man!"

"Hi everyone," Adrien said with a bright smile, not one of those smiles for the camera in countless _Gabriel_ advertisements but a genuine smile.

"Dude, good to see you again!" Nino said, giving him a high-five.

"You too, Nino!" Adrien replied. "I still have that song list you put together for my last birthday! I listen to it all the time!"

Nino looked shocked, and then ecstatic. Not knowing what else to get the rich young model for his previous birthday, the aspiring DJ put together a humble little "mixtape" on a burned CD, and to hear that Adrien Agreste was still listening to it all the time a year later…

"Thanks Adrien, I really appreciate it!" Nino exclaimed.

Marinette watched it unfold with a smile on her face, feeling strangely happy. The whole class was welcoming him like some great returning hero, and Adrien humbly accepted their well-wishes in his usual modest way.

 _He's really something else,_ she thought to herself, turning pink and feeling all fuzzy inside.

And then Marinette saw Chloé sitting there at their shared desk, calmly observing the rest of the class welcoming Adrien. However, when Chloé's gaze slid over to her, Marinette could see her expression becoming just a bit more guarded.

Marinette's fuzzy feelings for Adrien faded away as she looked back at Chloé. The blonde looked a little guilty too.

Not saying anything, Marinette walked over and sat down at her seat.

"Hi, Marinette," her best friend said politely.

"Hi, Chloé."

After a beat, Chloé said, "Look, Marinette, I'm sorry about last night…"

"It's fine, Chloé…"

"No, it's not," Chloé retorted, but not harshly. Composing herself, the blonde said, "I wasn't trying to be a hypocrite. I don't know what happened with you on your end, but I felt really bad for you. You know, for whatever it was."

"Thanks, I guess," Marinette mumbled, thinking about Tikki and the Miraculous even as she tried to shove it out of her mind. Then she grimaced a little when she thought back to Chloé criticizing Ladybug, unaware that it was really _Marinette_ she was criticizing. "And for what it's worth… I'm sorry I lost my temper at you, I didn't mean to do that. I honestly don't know why I did that."

"Thanks," Chloé mumbled. "Don't worry about it."

A moment of awkward silence passed between them, until Chloé cleared her throat.

"Look, Marinette," Chloé said slowly, "if it's really that important to you, if you really need to know what's bothering me… then I guess I can tell you what it is."

Marinette looked up and turned her head so fast that she felt her own neck cricking and almost got whiplash. "What!?" she blurted. "Really!?"

"Keep it down," Chloé muttered fiercely, glancing around at the rest of the class. Marinette flushed a little and had the good grace to look a little embarrassed, but Chloé smoothly continued, "Can we talk about it after school? By ourselves, when no one else is around?"

Marinette was honestly surprised. Whatever she'd been expecting when she walked into school this morning, it hadn't been this. She didn't feel the need to pry Chloé's deep dark secret out of her, she didn't even want to do that all that badly… but she hadn't expected Chloé to simply offer it like this either, and so soon.

"Uh, sure, Chloé," Marinette said, playing it cool. "You can come over after school, we can talk then."

"Thank you, Marinette," Chloé said, although she didn't sound all that relieved to Marinette. "Friends?"

"Friends."

Chloé looked a little relieved as she nodded at that.

It wasn't a full reconciliation, but at least it was a step in the right direction.

Feeling a little better, she went through her bag to retrieve her notes for class — and tried not to feel too bad when her hand brushed against the small box containing the Ladybug earrings and _Tikki_ within it…

She pushed those thoughts aside and tried to focus on the new day at school instead.

* * *

The one calling himself Hawk Moth had been eager to continue his work this morning. There was that one little matter about his only child being a rebellious youth again, but he would worry more about it later.

For now, he had much bigger concerns to take care of.

He was particularly keen to akumatize that one teenage boy again — Ivan Bruel, who became Stoneheart — so he focused on the school in question.

He _thought_ he'd sensed something in the vicinity, something along the lines of righteous anger at insufferable people ( _Probably just more adolescent melodrama,_ he thought dismissively), and he wondered if it was the same kind of burning anger he'd felt yesterday… but before he could really focus on it, it was gone.

He couldn't stop wondering just who this particularly angry individual could be…

Still, there was no use in lamenting missed opportunities. For his first foray as Hawk Moth, he was actually doing quite well.

And sure enough, there it was: The opportunity to akumatize this young man into Stoneheart once again. There had been a brief panic when he was losing his lock on the young man's negative emotions, but luckily for Hawk Moth, something must have happened to make him angry again.

"Yes," he grinned. "This is what I've been waiting for. You know the way, my little akuma. Fly away and empower him!"

Soon enough, the akuma merged with Ivan's wadded-up song lyrics clutched in his hand.

Once again, Ivan heard Hawk Moth in his head: _"This is your second chance, Stoneheart, and this time you'll have extra help. No one will stop you from capturing the love of your life. Just remember, I'll need something in return."_

His passions inflamed once again, Ivan didn't resist and instead silently consented to Hawk Moth's offer.

And once he was transformed into Stoneheart again, he opened his eyes and all the other stone beings across Paris started waking up…

* * *

As she watched Adrien finish saying hello to everyone and then take his seat next to Nino, Rachel hoped that she'd made the right decision, in resolving to tell Marinette her secret later.

She'd thought it over, mentally mapping out every possibility…

First, it would hinge on whether or not Marinette would believe her. Rachel had no real evidence, other than that drawing from when she was five years old and the fact that she was so incredibly fluent in English, as well as so intimately familiar with American culture compared to most French teenagers.

As for the issue of her own wartime experiences… Rachel had decided that she would only paint in broad strokes first, and only provide more details about her experiences if Marinette asked about them.

And there were only two possible distinct outcomes which Rachel could see, assuming that Marinette ultimately believed her. Either Marinette would eventually come to terms with it, and hopefully they could continue to be friends… or Marinette would be horrified and terrified by these revelations and cut Rachel — _Chloé_ — out of her life and that would be the end of it.

And if Marinette didn't believe her… oh well, then. But even if Marinette ran around Paris claiming that the mayor's daughter was a lunatic who thought she was a reborn warrior from another universe, then who would believe her?

Rachel didn't want to see her friendship with Marinette end, but this strain couldn't go on either. It wasn't fair to either of them.

And then there was the issue of how that would affect Adrien, which was another can of worms in itself…

She pushed those thoughts out of her head when Ms. Bustier called for class to be quiet for roll call.

"Adrien Agreste?" Ms. Bustier called aloud.

Adrien didn't respond right away, and Nino had to nudge him.

"Uh, present?" he stuttered. The rest of the class laughed a little, but quickly composed themselves.

"Chloé Bourgeois?"

"Present," she chimed.

"Ivan Bruel?"

"PRESENT!" a deep voice boomed.

Stoneheart stood on the threshold, having busted the door down. And then without missing a beat, it turned to face a certain girl in the back of the room, bellowing her name: "MYLÈNE!"

"Oh hell, not again," Rachel muttered as she grabbed Marinette and ducked behind the desks, against the wall.

Not wasting any time, she quickly pulled out her cell phone and texted her father: _STONEHEART BACK AGAIN, PLEASE HELP!_

Rachel's blood ran cold as she heard Mylène screaming as she begged Ivan — no, _Stoneheart_ — to let her go.

She might have been shaking, but she couldn't tell; she was too busy trying to keep herself calm and not get Marinette any more freaked out than the other girl already was.

She was also trying to keep the flashbacks and bad memories at bay — not just that one time she'd had to flee from Visser Three as he pursued her in that "rock monster" morph, but just about every memory involving the visser and his many deadly and monstrous morphs.

Rachel could also feel the _fear_ taking over, paralyzing her body and locking up her mind. It was one thing yesterday, when Stoneheart had been on the opposite side of the building from them when he first appeared, but now it felt all too real when she was trapped in the same room as him. She forced herself to stay brave, but the fear and the terror overwhelmed her. She also felt herself flashing back to _that night_ when it all began…

 _No, don't even think about it!_ she told herself, but it was too late, because now her memory was dragging her mind back to that. Even with her eyes scrunched shut, she could see her memories playing in front of her, a scary film being projected onto the screens of the insides of her eyelids…

 _She was no longer hiding behind a desk in a school,_ _but now she was back in that abandoned construction site, hiding with the others behind that brick wall, watching as Visser Three morphed into that giant monstrosity, and then snatched Elfangor up off the ground, holding Elfangor high up in the air, ready to eliminate him in such a horrible and uncivilized way, and she and her friends had to stop Jake from doing something crazy and suicidal which would have doomed them all—_

And then, just like that, she was snapped out of her memories and brought back to the present by a voice in this very room:

"Hey, knock it off, you overgrown rock!" Rachel heard another girl's voice shout.

"Alya…?" Rachel muttered, daring to peek her head up from behind the desk.

"And what do _you_ want, new girl?" Stoneheart sneered at Alya.

"I want you to stop, duh!" Alya retorted, hands on her hips and not looking the least bit worried about the big rocky supervillain looming over her.

"You're pretty brave with no superheroes around," Stoneheart spat.

"No, but I'm sure they'll be soon!" Alya retorted confidently, whipping out her smartphone and focusing it on Stoneheart. "Smile, you're on camera! Just you watch, Ladybug and Cat Noir will be here any minute now!"

Rachel heard Marinette make some kind of strange whimpering sound, as if Marinette couldn't believe that Alya had just said that. That made Rachel flinch even as she held Marinette tight, trying not to think too much to their argument from yesterday.

"And if they don't?" Stoneheart sneered.

"Well, who knows, maybe Majestia will fly over for a little visit!" Alya boldly retorted, not budging an inch as she kept her smartphone focused on Stoneheart. "Just like she says, 'Evil triumphs when good people do nothing!'"

"Alya, no, please stop," Marinette whimpered, and Rachel immediately clapped her hand over Marinette's mouth, hoping that Stoneheart wouldn't hear them.

"Ugh, enough with the fangirl stuff already!" Stoneheart spat. "And stop recording me!"

"Let Mylène go, and I'll stop recording you," Alya countered, sounding totally confident. "And I promise I won't upload all this to my blog! How do you like that, big guy!?"

 _And here I thought Jake was crazy for wanting to rush in and attack them all with that rusted pipe,_ Rachel thought to herself. _Even_ I _was never this crazy!_

"Um, Alya, maybe you shouldn't do this…" Sabrina began to say from her own hiding spot, but Stoneheart cut her off.

"So, you want an inside scoop, huh?" Stoneheart spat. "I can work with that!"

And just like that, Stoneheart reached out to Alya, scooping him up in his other giant hand. The rest of the class screamed or gasped as they realized what was happening.

As for Rachel, she continued huddling with Marinette as Stoneheart trudged back down the classroom steps. She could feel her own teeth rattling from the force of his gigantic footfalls.

Rachel clapped her other hand over her mouth, because now she didn't trust _herself_ not to make any sounds or stupid comments. But she definitely didn't expect what Alya would say next: "WOOHOO! Check it out, folks! I've been abducted by a supervillain! This is _so_ going onto my blog as soon as I get rescued!"

And just as Rachel was marveling at how crazy Alya seemed to be, Stoneheart kicked a large hole in the wall to escape from the building. Even as Stoneheart jumped out and stomped away, they could still hear Mylène screaming in fear and Alya bombarding Stoneheart with all kinds of questions.

One by one, the rest of the class slowly emerged from their hiding spots, but Rachel just stayed put. None of them said a word; they were all too busy trying to process what had just happened in their midst. Even as she let go of Marinette and continued huddling under the desk, she still didn't move.

"Chloé?" Marinette asked softly, trying to stay calm herself. "Are you alright?"

But the blonde was still shaking. Except it wasn't from fear anymore… no, now it was something else. Now she was shaking from anger.

As her fear gave way to anger, Rachel reflected on everything which had transpired within the past twenty-four hours. She was angry, all right… angry at this new situation with these new supervillains marauding around town, angry at what she and her friends had to put up with, angry yet again at how _she'd been dumped in this crazy universe with no explanation whatsoever_ ** _and no way of defending herself or fighting back against evil threats…_**

She didn't even resist as she let her anger take control, falling back into her old habits of acting first and asking questions later. She surrendered her body to her old instincts, and she could feel herself moving as if on autopilot while her mind tried to devise a strategy on the fly.

_To hell with not fighting back because I don't have any special powers! I can't just stay here and do nothing!_

One thing was for sure: She would never abandon her friends. No matter what her name was, no matter what world she lived in, she would always do what she could to protect those around her.

"Chloé, where are you going!?" Marinette exclaimed.

"I'm gonna stop him," Rachel growled.

"And how the heck are you gonna do that!?"

"I dunno, but I'll figure it out!"

And before Marinette could stop her, Rachel was gone.

 _Let's do it!_ she thought to herself as she raced out of the classroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Like I said, sorry for the long wait. But here, have an extra-long chapter! The next chapter shouldn't take as long, and I can't wait to complete the "Origins" redux so we can plow ahead to what comes after. After that comes my first OC villain, and THEN comes Stormy Weather…
> 
> We never got the name of the second and last Yeerk to infest Jake's brother Tom (the first one being Temrash 114 from _#6 The Capture_ ), the same one who Rachel killed in the end. So I tried to come up with a good Yeerk-sounding name, and I put my knowledge of Latin to good use. There's the Latin words for "this" ( _hic/haec/hoc_ ) and for "that" ( _ille/illa/illud_ ), but then there's another way to say "that" in Latin ( _iste/ista/istud_ ), which is used with a very forceful and negative and even hateful way (i.e. "I hate _that_ man over there"). So I basically tweaked the Latin word _istud_ to give this unnamed Yeerk a name which basically means "that thing" with very unflattering connotations. Then I just gave it the number "501" as a nod to the date May 2001 (05/01) when the final _Animorphs_ book was released, in which Rachel killed said Yeerk. (Apologies to the 501st Legion from the _Star Wars_ universe for the unfortunate coincidence.)
> 
> Also, what do you all think of my nasty new OC "Irina Afanasyeva"? She's basically the fill-in for canon!Chloé, and maybe also canon!Lila. And yes, her sidekick Dieter plays canon!Sabrina to Irina's canon!Chloé. And a BIG shout-out goes to the wonderfully talented **aileri** for illustrating Irina for me; you can find this marvelous artist on DeviantArt!
> 
> Oh, and I know I said I wouldn't be putting unnecessary comments in the Author's Notes anymore, but I have one BIG thing to ask you, Dear Readers… **How badly do you want to see Evillustrator in this story?** I wasn't originally planning on including him in this story (because this version of Chloé wouldn't do that to Nathaniel), but now I'm having second thoughts, and ideas on how to twist the circumstances to make that happen…


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